All my life I’ve felt like a duck; on the surface I’m calm and everything looks fine, but under the pitch black water, I’m treading as fast as I can to stay afloat.

I’ve been a massive overthinker for as long as I could remember. So many thoughts have run rampant through my mind that I can’t even remember all of them.

Does she like me?

What did she mean by that?

If I say “hi,” will they think I’m weird?

How do I really appear to all these people?

The constant fear of whether or not I said the right thing, if people will judge me if I express the “wrong” opinion or over analyzing simple text messages has been present my whole life. Even as I sit in my bed, writing this piece at 10:30 p.m. and beyond exhausted, I find myself recapping the events of the day and wondering if there was a subtle nuance that I somehow missed and if that somehow means that I’ve destroyed relationships. 

On the brightside, at least I can multitask.

I’ve been stuck in an infinite loop since the day I was born and it’s not limited to social situations. 

The constant worry of whether or not I did an assignment to the best of my abilities, the need to prepare days in advance out of the fear that I won’t meet a deadline and the inability to deal with ambiguity in a project has controlled my life. While it’s given me the potential to always be prepared for any scenario possible (and I do mean any scenario) or be labeled as the friend who always says the right thing, it’s also been the root of extreme and unhealthy levels of anxiety.

This may seem like something every high schooler goes through, after all, who doesn’t worry about people judging them or whether or not they scored high enough on their last test, but it’s not. This is something that is far more extreme and harmful.

I have experienced many sleepless nights that look like scenes out of a movie where, after pacing and squirming in agony, the main character is begging for an all powerful entity to put them out of their misery. The pain I feel in my head as my brain starts to churn, the warmth spreading across my forehead like a bad fever and the recurring pleas for it to stop in my few seconds of respite are all too familiar. It has become something I can rely on, a source of dependency and sometimes, if I’m being honest with myself, comfort too.

For the longest time I thought I was alone in these feelings. I thought if I expressed these thoughts to anybody, they surely would not understand and would most definitely judge me for it. 

Then, my sophomore year started. 

As this year has progressed, I’ve slowly met more and more people who struggle with the same things I do. 

At first when I met them I thought, “sure they think about stuff, but there’s no way that it’s as extreme as me.” As I got to know these people, I realized we could relate more than I thought. I soon came to realize that many of my friends fret over an assignment or lose sleep at night recapping the events of the day the same way I do.

This finally gave me the comfort and acceptance I’ve been seeking my entire life. Finally I wasn’t alone. I could express this pain with people who would understand and would not judge me for it.

Just knowing this helps more than you would think. Being able to bond with my now best friend over a simple interaction we had with another person earlier in the day and not receive a look of judgment and disdain for saying that it had ruined your entire day, but instead hear the oh so eloquent words “ugh, I know right?!” heals my mind and soul.

Those simple words and the comforting expression on her face as we share in mutual agony somehow makes the torture a little less… torturous.

So this is my advice to you: start opening up about it. While it’s most definitely not a cure-all, it does help ease some of the pain.

My advice to everyone else: know that someone can look completely fine and even happy, but behind their eyes there could be a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions that are creating the “perfect” storm.

To all those people whose minds have been tormented, whose sleep has been stolen, whose souls have been broken, just know, I see you. And it does get better.

Follow Nyah Rama (@nyah_rama) and @CHSCampusNews on Twitter.