How Did I Get Here?

My own journey of illness and recovery is a long one. I have suffered anxiety most of my adult life though I personally don't call it that. The dictionary definition describes anxiety as worry, it doesn't come close to what I have experienced, terror would be a better word. I used to have what I called " cliff edge days". There would be some event in my future that would cause me such stress thinking about it I couldn't see beyond that day; it felt like that day or event was my last day and that if it went wrong I would go over that cliff edge and into some unknown darkness. The closer I got to that event the more stressed I would get and I'd think " this time tomorrow it will all be over.." I wished I could speed up time and skip whatever was causing me to be terrified. I'd get through those days some how and feel better...until the next event. Somehow I'd put on my "happy mask" grit my teeth and endure what to me was an awful experience. It could be something as simp,e as going somewhere unfamiliar, dealing with something at work I had never experienced before, going to an unfamiliar meeting or a dozen other things that a lot of people would not find stressful but to me they felt like life or death situations with various dark scenarios going through my head as the day unfolded. I learned how to hide my stress behind my happy mask (although my wife is one of the few people who can see through this) and thought it was just me and that no one else felt like this...until I was in therapy with others just like me.