Laying on my couch, scrolling through my phone. 

God you’re so miserable.

For the past few days I’ve had this rash on me. It’s not like any rash though, it keeps talking to me.

I kept telling my parents about it but they kept saying I’m making things up so I could skip school.

You’re so lonely.

I ignore it and open up Instagram. I see that last night, all of my friends were hanging out together at someone’s house.

They didn’t invite you because you’re so annoying. When will you learn that you’re not worth anyone's time?

That’s not true, right? Right..?

I scratch the rash. 

Everytime I ignore the rash or scratch it, it keeps getting worse. I wish someone would listen to me when I asked to go to the doctor.

I get my stuff for school and head out into my car. The rash keeps bickering and sounds like constant static in my brain.

They don’t like you. You deserve to be alone. You did something wrong. You’re always making people mad. You…

I scratch my rash once again.

I park my car and head into school. The rush of students by the lockers makes my rash worse, so I’ve been trying to avoid any kind of contact with people.

They’re staring. You’re weird, that's why they are staring. Get out of here. You don’t belong here.

I hear someone faintly calling my name in the back but I don’t turn around. I’m too scared.

I run into my first period and hope that no one decides to bother me for the day.

…

By the time I get home, my mom is standing at the kitchen counter with a frown on her face.

I know it already. It’s my grades. 

You’re so stupid. How do you fail 3 classes? You can’t do anything right.

“3 classes? Come on, you used to be a straight A student! What happened?! You can’t just…”

Her voice drowns out. 

Even your mom hates you. Your life is so miserable. Look at you always messing everything up for everyone.

I scratch my rash.

…

The next day at school something weird happened.

I walked in like I usually do, but everyone was standing in a single-file line, just…staring at me.

My heart rate sped up.

My hands got sweaty.

It feels like someone is suffocating me.

It’s my rash.

I scratch it but this time the rash won’t stop ranting on and on and I feel it’s bumps begin to tighten around my throat. 

I fall to the floor, sweating, crying…

You’re just a mess making it harder for everyone.

That was the last thing I heard before I passed out.

…

“I think she’s waking up..”

“What happened to her?”

I slowly open up my eyes and see all my friends circled around me in the….where am I?

“You’re in the hospital, don’t worry.” I hear someone say. 

When I finally woke up, I saw the doctor next to me and all my friends on my right, worry plastered all over their faces.

How long has it been since I’ve seen them?

The doctor clears his throat and says, “You’re okay, don’t worry. We gave you some medicine and the rash is gone. You might have some scars from all the scratching though.”

He leaves the room and that’s when they all tell me that I have been avoiding them for the past month. All texts, interactions, anything. 

“Ever since you got that rash, you kept scratching your neck and talking to yourself. We had tried asking you if you were okay but you got hostile and just cut off communications with us,”

“It must’ve been a really bad rash? I’m sorry we didn’t try harder to be there for you,”

Oh..

The tears welled up in my eyes and I began to sob uncontrollably. 

This was the first time in weeks where I heard silence.

The first time in weeks where there wasn’t a second voice telling me I wasn’t good enough.

Finally.

–

Anxiety is a medical condition. It’s not something we should ignore just because we can’t see it. It’s just like a rash on your body. It’s annoying, painful and so overall, vexatious. 

Claire McCarthy, MD, a physical therapist in Boston says that 1 in 3 of all adolescents ages 13 to 18 will experience anxiety disorder.

Anxiety can be very hard to describe to someone who does not have it, so with this story, we see that anxiety is represented through this talking rash. Overthinking is only one part of anxiety which is seen by the words that come out of the rash. 

We see in the start that she assumes that her friends hate her since they did not invite her to their get together the night before. The rash does the talking and fills her brain with the idea that she is not enough, just like anxiety can do. Kristen Fuller, MD and Robert Hinojosa, LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) find that, “Anxiety, social anxiety, and depression can get you feeling down. Negative thoughts focused on your faults or mistakes are common with these disorders, and can lead to feelings of worthlessness or assumptions that the world hates you. This, of course, is not based in reality; instead, it’s emotional reasoning that comes from these disorders.”

This rash, this anxiety, is ignored by her parents as they assume it was a way for her to skip school. Adults, teens, and everyone else, must not ignore the signs of anxiety. It is imperative that you help this person through the hard times.

When she enters school, we see that she avoids contact with everyone and isolates herself from social areas. Anxiety is a huge contributor for that and can lead to distancing from friends. Alex Derr from VisualNetworkLabs says that, “People who experience significant social anxiety commonly withdraw from social situations to reduce their stress. However, over time this can make their anxiety even worse, which only makes them more isolated.” Her memories and ideas of what was occurring between her and her friends were all distorted due to anxiety. 

Anxiety also can lead into falling grades due to all the stress you hold with the anxiety itself and the overbearing thoughts of loneliness. We see this with all the stress from isolation slowly bleeding into her motivation for school.

The part that I want to stick out the most is when she passes out at school. This was created to represent an anxiety or panic attack. McLean Hospital describes the difference by saying, “Unlike anxiety, which often has clear triggers, panic attacks occur suddenly and unexpectedly and typically only last for a few minutes.” In this case, I included a panic attack to educate everyone what triggers them (even if none) and what it feels like.

The way she describes the rash suddenly suffocating her, was to show her stress from the anxiety, closing in around her throat and making her slowly pass out. To add onto that, she makes this idea up in her head that everyone was watching her like a hawk, a clear distortion anxiety makes.

The last thing her “rash” (the anxiety) tells her is that she’s a burden. She feels like she’s bothering everyone and that people think she’s annoying due to her passing out. Any mental health illness, including anxiety, can make you feel like a burden. Remember that asking for help does not make you a burden.

The goal of this piece is to educate you on anxiety. People tend to confuse anxiety and the feeling of nervousness and I hope that through this piece, many teens and hopefully even adults, understand that anxiety is a constant feeling of worry. It’s a rash that you keep scratching. If you have anxiety or suffered from it, know that your scars, visible or not, do not define you.