The reason my anxiety started.

Hey guys, well, whoever is reading this. If there is anyone. I hope, if your in the UK, your enjoying the weather. Not often we see the weird thing in the sky called the sun.

Anyway, I did a poll on my Instagram feed to see what you guys wanted me to write about next and my anxiety was what you guys wanted to know about. Before I start I just wanted to say that, everybody’s mental health is different and everybody reacts to situations differently. This story does also include violence and rape and self harm.

Here we go. So the main reason why my anxiety started takes us back to 2014. God I’m making that sound like it was ages ago! Anyway, I was 15 at this point and was living with my mum, my 8 year old little sister, my 9 month old little sister and my step dad. My mental health wasn’t at its best as my grandma had died exactly a week before. I was very close to her as her and my granddad basically brought me up, so as you can imagine this was quite hard. Which then caused me not to sleep.

It must have been around 3am and I heard a knock on the door. To be honest at this point all i was thinking was who the hell is turning up at 3am this time. People were always in and out of the house as my step dad at the time, now my mum’s ex boyfriend, was a drug dealer. So there were always people in and out of the house. So I didn’t think anything of it. I’m in bed on my phone at this point as I couldn’t sleep but my bedroom window is at the front of the house above the front door so I could hear when people were coming in and out.

So, I then hear the door open, my mums front door is always unlocked either because shes lost the key or forgot to lock it. Plus where she lives, everybody’s always in and out of each others houses so its easier to keep the door open. I then hear a man shout for my step dad. (I don’t want to mention names as I like to keep this part of my life private). So I hear a man shout a few times but I knew that my mum and step dad were in bed as I heard them come up like an hour before so I open my bedroom door but my step dads already walking down the stairs.

I should mention at the point that i recognized the voice. It was one of my step dads friends who had been round a couple times and become quite close to us all. We thought he was a friend. BOY, were we wrong.

So I go back in my room and get back into bed and I can hear them talking so i’m like its chill, he’s probably just come round to pick up or whatever. Its now been like 10 minutes and I can hear my step dad basically saying how he, the ”family friend”, shouldn’t have turned up that let and let himself in. Granted, its out own fault for not locking the door. Its what came next that changed me.

They then got into a bit of a heated discussion, I couldn’t really hear what they were saying but I could just hear that it was getting louder. I then hear my mum go downstairs and she asks the ”family friend” to leave as she had a baby in the house who was asleep. They all started arguing and shouting which eventually woke my baby sister up. So I shouted down to my mum to let her know that she was awake, my mum came up and grabbed her and went downstairs with her.

Keep that in mind, through everything that happens next, my mum was holding my 9 month old baby sister.

I get back into bed and try listen to whats going on. I hear nothing, like literally nothing. So in my head i’m like yeah that god for that. I then hear really loud footsteps coming up the stairs and loads of banging and my mum shouting ”He’s got a knife”.

I immediately jump out of bed and open my bedroom door. I see my mum stood at the top of the stairs, still holding my baby sister, my step dad stood a few stairs down holding the stair gate he had ripped of the wall, and this not so ”family friend” about 2 steps down from my step dad holding a massive, and i mean massive, knife. Pointing it at my mum.

My mum was shouting at me to phone the police so i dialed 999 and nothing. I couldn’t even say what emergency service i wanted. I literally froze. I was just stood in my door like a statue. My mum took my phone off me and she was shouting down the phone for the police to come. At this point the guy, if i type family friend one more time ill literally cry because he was the opposite of a friend, had fled. Taking the knife with him.

The police came straight away and there was loads of them. Id say at least 7/8. They were all lovely and me and my mum wrote witness statements about everything and a police officer stayed with us so we would feel more safe.

After this, I couldn’t leave the house for 3 weeks. All I could think about was him coming back and killing my mum. I had nightmares every night. I didn’t go to school or anything. I was so terrified and scared. I started having panic attacks and I think the longest one went on for an hour and a half.

We went to court about 6 months later, but he got away with it.

Ever since that day I have suffered with awful anxiety which causes me not to feel safe around most men, i cant go into big crowds and i wont ever walk anywhere in my own, even in daylight.

My mum and little sister are perfectly fine and he never came back or anything.

That’s it. Sorry if this was too long or boring.

Thanks for reading!