The irrationality of fear first gripped me when I was young. 

I was in first grade…and the thought of school terrified me. 

But that’s normal, right? Its culturally common for kids to hate school and who, at some point, hasn’t ever seen a young child screaming bloody murder when getting dropped off to their first day of school?

Then came middle school, where at age 12, I was so distraught with anxiety, that I walked in one night to tell my Mom I no longer wanted to live. I told her I had been having thoughts of ending my life with my Dad’s shotgun.