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I know I’ve been living with it for the past 18 years of my life, but I never knew what it was. I had an accident last year, 2015, where I was driving and I hit someone on their motorcycle. It was mutual, both parties are wrong. A man, a woman, and their child. Nobody gets hurts, except the lady got a sprained ankle from falling down to asphalt from the motorcycle. Everything ended up fine, they forgave me and I paid for the medical bills. I haven’t had the chance to go and drive again, I’m not completely sure that I can do it again. The thought of that accident is still on my mind, being replayed every 10 minutes. What if it was more than that? What if there the woman turns out to have more pain than just a sprained ankle? And after that thought, it always ends up in a panic attack.
I never really told anyone in my family that I couldn’t go back to driving, they would thought I was overreacting. They don’t even know I sometimes have panic attacks. Being born and raised in an Asian family gave you one thing, you never talk about your feelings. That’s why I am never comfortable telling my mom about my panic attacks, ask her how to handle it, and where do I get some help. These thoughts aren’t just about the accidents, it’s about everything and mostly little things that I said or people said to me.
I’ve been living away from my family for the last 7 months, I’m getting more space to find out what I am going through, and it turns out to be so much more than just repetitive thoughts in my head. My mind become more uncontrollable, I need to do stuff the specific way and if I don’t do them right, I get my daily panic attacks. With being away, I learnt to embrace my anxiety and OCD more, I am not myself without them. I am not sure if my friends really know what I’m going through is serious, sometimes they think I am just overreacting and I seriously don’t know how to tell them. Especially my family, I don’t know if they will accept it.