Amanda Stern

And I understand in the back of that cab that the thing that is hardest for everyone in the world to do, which is to face your fear, actually feels easier and less exhausting to me than continuing to live my life the way that I've been living it.

And so that's it.

That's what I decide.

I am going to live my life

facing my fears because I cannot continue to live my life beholden to all my terror.

We pull up in front of my childhood home, and I remove my fingers from the lock, and I race inside, the promise of being close to my mom.

The next morning, my mom sends me to her therapist, and I find myself sitting in front of him, and he asks me for all my symptoms, and I tell him,

He asks me how many weeks I've been feeling this way, and I say, I don't do that kind of math.

I've been feeling this way a thousand weeks.

I don't know, since I was a baby.

And he's shocked that I've gone this long without being diagnosed or treated, and he tells me that the name of my condition is a panic disorder.

Only, my panic disorder grew up, got married, and had babies, and now my body is home to five or six different anxiety disorders and clinical depression.

He puts me on medication, I start seeing a therapist, and I slowly get better and better and better.

My 25-year-old self was right.

Facing my fears is easier than avoiding them.

Avoiding them gave my fears power, but facing them gives me power.

Now I can get into a cab and not be afraid he's going to kidnap me.

I can write books and do readings from them.

I can have dinner parties and actually attend them.

I can be afraid and do it anyway because I know that facing my fears won't kill me, but running from them almost did.