Blood begins to rush to my head, there’s a warm feeling burrowing under my cheeks, everything looks and sounds groggy, I feel faint and choke up, and all because I was asked a few questions. This is what an anxiety attack feels like. Everything may be perfectly fine at one moment, but BAM, and just like that I am unable to speak for a half an hour.

I have anxiety and when I get in situations, whether they’re tough or just normal, I’ll sometimes have an anxiety attack. This follows me around like a murderer waiting for his perfect moment to strike. For example, I work at Little Caesars and one day when I was working on counter two ladies, maybe in their mid 40’s, came in. It was a fairly sunny day around 6:30pm, and this was within the first month of me working there. They ordered and I was trying to ask them if they wanted any sauce with their bread but they were laughing about something, so I just assumed they wouldn’t want any. While I was getting their order one of them walked out to their car and the other one was waiting. As I gave it to her, she frowned and walked out whispering something under her breath. I was then standing there lost in my confusion wondering what the lady had said.

After that situation was over, a fairly old man walked up to the counter and he was very tall and slim and asked what that was all about and I said I wasn’t sure. As I was getting the man’s meal, I noticed that the car that the two ladies were in had come back. The medium height woman, who had dirty blonde hair and seemed like she had a slight fake tan, came back in and in a rude tone told me that I had forgotten to give her sauce for her bread. I was like oh I’m sorry about that, it’ll be $1. She then started to get snippy with me and started questioning why it was a dollar. Our manager wasn’t there so I had someone else come up and answer her questions. He didn’t know how to respond and she started talking about how in Ohio the sauce is free and I said I’m sorry but this is in Michigan and she goes don’t have an attitude with me, don’t you think I know this is Michigan. We ended up just giving her the sauce because the other people in the lobby were getting upset with her. I then began to choke up, I could feel the inside of my ears getting warm, and everything started getting blurry. I was having an anxiety attack. As the next customer came up I was already tearing up. The woman told me just to breath and ignore what had just happened and try and focus because there were a lot of people beginning to come in. I got through about 3 people before I ran out of pennies and I had to ask someone to come up and get some more out of the safe for me. While they were opening the safe, they noticed that I was unable to speak clearly and my face was all red. I was very heated and could not control my emotions. Then another person I work with told me to go to the back and breath and that she could take over the counter for me.

I ended up standing in the back for a half an hour trying to calm down so that I could speak without tearing up. The heat of the moment eventually died down and I could finally talk to people without tearing up. It took a while for it to go down and I was very confused on why I was so worked up. This is a very heavy thing I have to carry around with me and can strike at any moment. I hope that I can learn to control this as I grow and mature.