I was a student. More than that, I was a student with an Individualized Education Program. Basically, an Individualized Education Program is a legal document which provides students with disabilities specialized accommodations in regards to their education.

For a long time, though, I thought that was simply all that I was, all that I ever would be, and that my conditions would define me as a person. I received multiple diagnoses, mostly physical and centered around my birth defect known as Spina Bifida, but that was it. I got my IEP, went through school as I could, and for a long time, I fooled myself into believing that was my life.

I learned to overlook the constant brain fog, disregard the passing headaches, and even shrug off the sleepless nights and breathless days where my heart would begin racing without explanation, leaving me feeling like I could not breathe. Sure, I was suffering, but to me, in my state of mind back then, just about anything  was preferable to seeking help; just about anything was better than seeing yet another doctor, or even worse, being forced to see a psychiatrist and all the social stigmas that come so irrationally attached to visiting them.

At least, I tried my best for a long, long  time. Too long, in fact. For years, ever since the latter days of high school all the way up until senior year of college, I suffered from a host of evolving or worsening conditions that I completely ignored.

If you stopped reading this now, please heed one word of advice as a fellow human being: don’t wait to get help. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

See, this is one of the beautiful aspects of being a human being that comes with its own host of pros and cons: the ability to evolve over time. I was born with one condition, and a number of others coinciding with it, but I was convinced that was all it would ever be for me. Blame it on some sort of arrogance, or simply a fear of doctors after a childhood consisting of over 16 surgical procedures by the age of 12, but really, I was just stubborn.

This coincided perfectly with the persistent social stigma that surrounds both physical and mental disabilities, leaving me to feel confident in my ability to walk by the family practice located right outside my apartment every single time.

Free counseling hours? No thanks, I don’t need any handouts, and I sure as heck don’t need a therapist. That’s for those crazy people; that’s for those lesser people.

As ashamed as I am to admit it now, truly, this is what I thought back then. This is what led to several years going through the most rigorous years of my academic life with undiagnosed ADD, OCD, and Panic Attack Disorder, all formerly diagnosed only after the most traumatic event of my entire life: my wake-up call.

The wake-up call that changed my life was an all-expenses-paid trip to the Emergency Room, which occurred after attempting to self-medicate the issue myself, too ashamed to see a real doctor. Thinking I was too good for them. After all, I knew my body better than anyone else, right?

Well, as it turns out, a quick look in the mirror and a chat with one of the many lifelong friends that I began pushing away could have given me the answer much sooner.

This was a gradual process, something that took many years to culminate to this apex of shame and regret, with the symptoms of my evolving conditions rearing their heads right around the end of high school, and appearing in full force when I attained the freedom that comes with college.

The freedom to finally be away from my parents, my final lifeline anchoring me to this world as I continued to push away those that I loved in fear of hurting them, of bringing them down with me; at least, that’s what I kept telling myself. In reality, it was all just one big excuse for me to prolong the inevitable, to take the path of least resistance, and avoid that which may be uncomfortable (seeking help) while ironically suffering all along.

After years and years of battling constant brain fog and unexplainable bouts of anxiety, it came to a point during my senior year where I just couldn’t take it anymore. My ADD makes it consistently hard to concentrate on just about anything, which means that no matter how smart I may or may not be, expressing that intelligence was a mere fantasy, just like the daydreams that began to overtake my conscious mind.

This made concentrating in class hard enough, constantly thinking of things like “Oh man, what could be going wrong now?” when I should be focusing on the lecture. It was no fault of the teachers that I failed as a student, and as a human being, it was all my own, due to my complete refusal to seek the help I so obviously needed.

On a good day, I would only suffer five panic attacks, spurred on by seemingly nothing at all. I’m sure you can only imagine what my bad days were like. To describe what a panic attack is like to someone else: Imagine that for a full 30 minutes you can hardly breathe, like you’re trapped under water without escape, and that feeling of no escape is all that echoes throughout your mind, sending every nerve firing, and pumping your veins full of adrenaline even in the most theoretically relaxing of scenarios, such as sitting on a nice, cushioned, recliner seat in a movie theater (this exact scenario played out multiple times). These attacks would come on at random, and without apparent cause.

There is still so much that we do not understand about the human body and its inner workings, but the going theory is that Panic Attack Disorder is caused by some sort of disruption of hormones. Considering that I was forced to undergo 16 surgeries by the age of 12 due to Spina Bifida, a birth defect wherein the spine does not completely close when it forms, and that during one of the surgeries related to its various complications my hypothalamus was severely damaged, this isn’t hard to believe at all, in my case.

Needless to say, my grades and my work plummeted as a result. Steadily up until that point in college, just enough to scrape by, but when senior year came rolling around I had finally reached my breaking point. Maybe it was the stress of nearing the end along with my course load, but regardless, the message is the same: my medical and academic needs had changed.

This is an unfortunate reality for human beings, being the ever-evolving organisms that we are, in that our bodies are constantly changing. Each and every day brings a whole host of new cells replacing the old, new connections forming within the mind, and above all else, a shifting perspective of reality as a whole.

That is the true purpose of this article: to convince anyone who may be like me (and I know I’m not alone) to realize that you are not a singular diagnosis.

You are a human being, and with that comes a whole host of beautiful opportunities, along with some potentially severe consequences that one must be on the lookout for.

Make yourself familiar with the signs and symptoms of evolving/worsening conditions, whether they be physical or mental, and please, please, don’t wait to seek help. Do not attempt to self-medicate, to tackle the mountain of burden all by yourself. Do not make the same mistake I did, the one that nearly cost me not only my academic career and relationships, but also my life. It is rare that I ever recommend the likes of WebMD due to the sheer amount of hypochondriacs out there (hello, friends!) and the fact that it can indeed fuel anxiety by itself, the internet is a necessary evil when it comes to recognizing the symptoms of such disorders.

Overall, though, here’s what I recommend: if you feel that something is off, that your thoughts just aren’t as clear as they used to be, certain mundane physical tasks such as typing are much more difficult than they used to be, and even if you just get a gut feeling, an overall sense of malaise, it is crucial that you take the first step of talking to your General Practitioner. The General Practitioner may not be able to treat, much less diagnose what is wrong with you, but above all else, trust that you know your body better than anyone.

If something feels wrong, tell them. They may not be able to fix you themselves, and they may not be able to send you on your merry way home with a magical bottle of pills that will make all the bad things go away, but they will initiate the next, most important step in this process: getting you referrals to the trained professionals who make it their life’s work to help people just like you. Whether it winds up being an orthopedic surgeon or a psychiatrist, you will be well on your way to the answers, and more importantly, the help that you seek so much, whether you really want to admit it or not.

There are countless resources out there for you, whether you’re currently enrolled in a college providing free counseling services, or a simple trip to the family doctor. Even online communities, for those of you truly averse to initial human contact regarding such personal issues, do exist for this very purpose.

Most are already well aware of the likes of WebMD, but even sub-communities within Reddit, forums dedicated to specific disorders, and blog posts are all out there at your disposal. It’s all a matter of taking that first step: realizing that you have a (new) problem, and doing whatever it takes to treat it.

After all, I may not know you, the reader, personally, but I do know one thing. You deserve to live the life you have been blessed with to its fullest extent. If something doesn’t feel normal, don’t just accept it as a new part of life, or chalk it up to stress when the symptoms actually come about on their own terms. Above all else, know this, you are more than your diagnoses, no matter how many you may wind up with.

You are a human being, one that deserves a life lived to its fullest potential, and one that can’t afford to let these inner demons take hold of the potential you have to offer this world.

So take charge of your life now; get the treatment you deserve. Speaking for myself, I completely changed my life around in a matter of weeks. I came from my worst, rock bottom in the ER with a catheter, heart monitor, and with various things being pumped both inside and outside of my body to the point that they had thought I was attempting to commit suicide.

Ironically, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I loved life, and all the people in it. Everything in my life was set up for me to go fantastically, with a whole network of friends who always let me know just how much they love and support me, but I just couldn’t stop myself from sabotaging this happiness at every turn.

But of course, I needed to put on a happy face for those I love, and make them believe, at least that everything really was that great, but on the inside, things couldn’t have been any worse. This, combined with my hesitation when it comes to seeing trained professionals, led to self-medication; self-medication that worked quite well, in fact…until it didn’t anymore.

The literal refrigerator full of supplements and gray market drugs that I attempted to self-medicate with was staggering, and really, it was only a matter of time before I crashed.  The wake-up call I needed was one of the most painful experience of my entire life as my girlfriend fell into my arms while dropping me off from the emergency room, sobbing and screaming in a way that chills me to my bones to this very day, simply saying,

“I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead!”

Over and over again.

Ever since that day, I have worked nonstop from the moment I wake until the moment my face hits the pillow to change things around. I got the help that I needed, seeing a therapist every week while taking prescribed Wellbutrin, and absolutely nothing else.

And you know what? I feel better than ever with that simple combination, despite the plethora of “safe” legal highs that I was self-medicating with for so long, numbing myself to the pain with benzodiazepine analogues “not made for human consumption,” along with a load of other things….things that I regret ever touching.

But hindsight is 20/20, and maybe I was indeed meant to go through this trial in order to share it with all of you. As of now, I’m set to graduate in May with a 3.5 GPA, far higher than it has ever been with the help of some particularly amazing professors that went above and beyond to help me in my time of need: Rachel Shapiro and Andrew Kopp.

Not only that, but as a Writing Arts Major I’m running two successful blogs, publishing one novel with two more on the way, and am participating in a total of six internships, most of which have either opportunity for advancement or count directly as college credit. More importantly, all of my personal relationships are thriving, and I can truly say, with a glowing smile on my face, that they are the strongest that they have ever been. I am the strongest that I have ever been, even though, and perhaps only because, I hit rock bottom.

I’m more successful, happier, and more fulfilled than I have ever been in my life. Whereas each and every day in the past blended together, just begging me to find some sort of “fast forward” button to scrape by and just get through it all, I am finally living the dream, the life I want to live, and you can too.

I adapted, I survived, and more importantly, I thrived. And if I can do it… you can too! Trust me on that, if you trust me on anything at all. You have it within you to make your life truly amazing, and achieve all that you were meant to achieve.