I want the world, I think. Even if it scares me.

I decide this is just A Bad Day. We all get them, because grief doesn't care how many years it's been.

And then it happens. The panic. It's slow at first, creeping through the cracks in my thoughts until everything starts to feel heavy. It builds; it becomes something physical that clutches at my insides and squeezes out the air and the blood.

Someone like you is brilliant and amazing.' I said. 'Why can't you see that in yourself?' The unfairness of it was starting to sink in. If she could only see herself like I did, there wouldn't be a problem. But she didn't, and she never would, and that was so many levels of wrong and unfair I almost couldn't comprehend it.

People in pain can be very self-destructive. And sometimes they pull in the people who are close to them, often without realizing.

Panic attacks are a lot like being drunk in some ways, you lose self-control. You cry for seemingly no reason. You deal with the hangover long into the next day.

Here are three separate but similar things: shyness, introversion and social anxiety. You can have one, two or all three of these things simultaneously. A lot of the time people thing they're all the same thing, but that's just not true. Extroverts can be shy, introverts can be bold, and a condition like anxiety can strike whatever kind of social animal you are. Lots of people are shy. Shy is normal. A bit of anxiety is normal. Throw the two together, add some brain-signal error - a NO ENTRY sign on the neural highway from my brain to my mouth perhaps, though no one really knows - and you have me.

I was sixteen, and I honestly believed that I was due a love story.

I was sixteen, and I honestly believed I was due a love story.