An Average Looking Mess

Welcome to my insane life. My name is Alex. I'm 20 years old, but sometimes I feel like I'm 12. I have generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, and panic disorder. I'm in college, living by myself. I have a boyfriend, a mom, a dad, a sister, a brother, a dog, and a small extended family. I'm an overeater when I get anxious, causing me to have body dysmorphia. Yep, I'm a hot mess, actually, an average looking mess.

I literally had cystic acne show up on my face in the past year. My face thinks it's going through puberty again. I'm stressed pretty much 24/7. I'm a people pleaser and become really anxious when I can't make everyone I love happy. Even to the point where I worry someone will die because I'm not with them. Maybe I'm just crazy, but actually I'm neurotic.

I constantly worry about everything. Let me just list a few that just happened in the last couple minutes: what if the classes I picked for my semester schedule next semester for some reason overlap in time, what if my mom finds out my boyfriend is spending the night tomorrow in my dorm, what if my boyfriend dies in a car crash driving in the snow tomorrow, what if when my grandpa is driving my mom to her appointment tomorrow something happens and they die, what if my grandma doesn't know I love her, what if my brother is sad I'm not home, what if my sister commits suicide because she's secretly depressed, what if my aunt gets sad in her house when she's alone, what if my dog thinks I'm never coming back or dies without me by his side, what if my dad feels like he has no one in the world, what if I don't worry about anyone enough that they die or feel unloved. Yup, that all went through my brain in a matter of five minutes. In lieu of transparency, I'm only being honest. You're reading this, so you must be interested.

Sometimes I worry I'm legit psychotic, but then I look up symptoms of five other diseases and I think I have that and not psychosis. That makes complete sense, right? I know why I am the way I am. I'm convinced it's genetic. My great-great grandma was married to three different men in three different states without divorcing or outliving any of them. I can only assume she was on the run or had some serious mental illnesses, possibly bipolar syndrome. Her daughter, my great-great grandma, became an orphan even though her father was still living around the age of 12 and was living apart from her siblings the rest of her life. I know from stories about her that she suffered from anxiety disorders. Her son, my grandpa, is probably the most normal out of this anxiety lineage. He worries, but he's pretty reasonable. Sometimes I think he hides it though. His daughter, my mom is a basket case. I love her, but she's crazy. She has all the anxiety disorders I do and a severe case of body dysmorphia. She blames my dad for all of this because she caught him looking at porn. And then there was me. The product of all this craziness. And in this modern world with social media I'm f****ed.

Welcome to my insane life.