Right before I wrote my first university exam, I felt extremely shaky and weak. I stood next to some classmates discussing some of the study terms when I realized how unbearably hot the basement was. I tore off my coat, but it wasn’t enough. I kept sweating and my throat kept restricting. Feeling like I was about to throw up, have diarrhea, faint, or all three, I went to the bathroom. I crouched in the bathroom stall, not knowing whether to put my head over the toilet and hold back my hair, pull down my pants and sit, or shut the lid so I didn’t drown when I fainted. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought, I’m going to die.

I wasn’t dying. I was having a panic attack; my first of many. During the spring of that year, I was diagnosed with (and began treating) panic disorder, which is a form of anxiety wherein panic attacks fuel anxiety instead of the reverse. Some days I’m totally okay, some days I have a panic attack much like the one I just described. Most days I feel on edge, sensing a panic attack lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce the second I do something wrong.

In the spirit of Bell Let’s Talk Day, I thought I’d write about how my mental illness affects my career as a writer. While I am not defined solely by my mental illness, there’s no denying that it is a big part of my life and it has significantly affected my career.

When it comes to the actual technical aspect of writing stories, poems, articles etc. my anxiety is quite the critic. I constantly question whether I’m good enough and deny myself a number of opportunities because I feel that I’ll never be a good writer. Needless to say, this makes it hard to find the motivation to write. But there is one aspect of my writing that panic disorder has actually helped. If there is one emotion that I know better than anyone, it’s fear. And I’m able to convey this emotion in my writing with precision.

My panic disorder is largely tied to social anxiety, so new people and big crowds make me nervous. Working in the field of writing is a good fit for me because a lot of it can be done in comfortable solitude. But networking is also important to get my name out there, which I find quite hard to do. And as much as it is my dream to have thousands of people reading my writing, that goal can be soul-crushingly terrifying at times.

I’ve tried very hard in this blog to communicate my mental illness accurately and neutrally. It doesn’t make me this amazing writer and it doesn’t make it impossible either. It’s simply something that I deal with on the day to day. If this blog makes another writer struggling with mental health feel comforted, awesome. If it helps a neurotypical person understand mental illness a little more, great. If it does neither, that’s cool too, because I’m proud of myself for being in a place where I can talk openly about my Panic Disorder.