I’ve always loved snow. I love the way it looks, I love playing in it. I always get way too cold way too fast, because I was not made for cold weather. But I love snow. Or at least I used to.

Over the past few years I’ve struggled with really bad anxiety. It goes through spurts of being really bad, and spurts of being practically nonexistent. After a bad summer, I’ve had it pretty easy these past couple months. But it seems, as soon as winter hit, so did my anxiety. This morning at 3:45 I woke up to an anxiety attack, for no reason whatsoever.

Since last Winter, it seems that as soon as the snow begins to fall, my anxiety hits. And this morning a huge winter storm settled in. And I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. I’m snowed in at my parents house, without a change of clothes or a phone charger. It’s not exactly my cup of tea. And to top it off, today my anxiety has been worse than it has in the past couple months.

Little things that shouldn’t bother me have been driving me nuts all day. Normally I wouldn’t care if someone didn’t text me back for three hours or if I missed a math problem. But today, I do. I keep trying to reason with myself, I keep trying to tell myself that it’s not the end of the world if I only got one point higher on that practice test than usual, and that just because someone hasn’t replied just yet, doesn’t mean they hate me.

I feel like two different people right now. My right mind and my anxiety. They’re fighting each other. Anxiety is trying to convince me that nothing is okay, while my right mind is trying to talk some sense into me. Anxiety keeps telling me to assume the worst, while my right mind is telling me I’m being silly and overthinking. It’s ridiculous, it feels like I’m drowning in shallow water, and if I would just stand up I would be fine, I just can’t convince myself to stand. And while I know to listen to my right mind, it’s easier to believe anxiety. And the thing is, my anxiety is shouting, while my right mind is a gentle whisper. My anxiety is an avalanche, while my right mind is as gentle as a snowflake.