To you...

I nearly drowned when I was 3. My mom had to jump into the pool fully clothed to rescue me. 44 years later, she still complains that I made her ruin her Mickey Mouse watch.

My mom broke my arm when I was 6. She tells a funny story about it. She doesn’t tell the part about when she came to me immediately afterward and complained impatiently, “Stop crying! It doesn’t hurt that bad.”

When I was in my 30′s, a doctor committed malpractice in his treatment of me, resulting in me permanently having less than 50% kidney function. Every single time I mentioned the kidney disease to my mother—panicking about what this would mean for the rest of my life, explicitly asking her for comfort and reassurance—she told me that it was my own fault for trusting the doctor instead of researching everything on my own.

Some people will tell you that nothing is more important than family.

I’m here to tell you that love is more important than family. Loving yourself is more important than family. Finding other people who offer you unconditional love is more important than family.

If your family causes you pain, then there are a hell of a lot of things more important than family.

Anxiety attacks can take different forms, such as:

Unpredictable bouts of rage or irritability

Nit-pickiness (obsessive behavior, which may be a part of OCD), and even a hypersensitivity to disarray, chaos, or any sort of change

Fast-talking, stuttering, stumbling over words

Not talking at all

Sitting rigid, staring into space, almost seeming “zoned out”

SOME AGUST D LYRICS: