Growing up with anxiety is never easy, no matter who you are. But when you grow up having as limited social contact as I did, it becomes a different animal altogether.

We moved a lot growing up, so school was always a social challenge for me. I remember starting kindergarten near the end of the year and remaining in that school throughout 1^st grade. I had a group of friends, although I was very “shy,” and had very few issues with anxiety that I recall. The rest of my childhood education was not as easy.

From grades 2 to 4, I remember very little (most likely because we had moved several times, often to new states as well as schools.) In fact I can't say for sure if I even attended school during my 2 grade year.

I do remember one thing during those years in school: being afraid to raise my hand, or be called on.

I didn’t speak if I didn’t have to. And even then I limited myself mostly to saying I don’t know. (Even though I often knew the right answers.) Generally, I wasn’t called on much for that reason.

I didn’t raise my hand for anything. And there was nothing on earth that could make me. Not even the call of nature. But of course, you can’t hold it forever- as I found out time and time again.

I wet my pants more than a few times in grade school. The possibility of avoiding shame and embarrassment by staying in my seat until everyone had left the room, seemed more likely than the 100% certainty that would come if I raised my hand. Besides, I could hold it with general success. And I couldn’t raise my hand.

Fourth grade is the only year I remember having what I perceived was a normal kid’s school life. I had friends, a bully, tests and field trips, and very little anxiety. I raised my hand in class. Sometimes I only thought I knew the answer, but I wasn’t afraid. And even when I answered wrong, I still raised my hand the next time.

It was also the only year I began, and finished, in the same school as the previous year.

We moved the following winter. I began 5^th grade in a new school, in a new town, but would not finish out the year.

I never returned to school until I was 23. I passed the GED by the skin of my teeth and proceeded to fail college over the next several years.

It’s hard to guess what my academic life may have been like had my family not bounced around so much. But I’m fairly confident that, although my test scores may have remained similar, my social skills, and consequently my college efforts would have greatly benefited from a more stable upbringing. 

It would only later become evident, in my teenage years, how utterly unprepared I was to participate in the coming world. I came into adulthood with little to say, and even less knowledge on operating in a social world- and thus, had with little to do with it.

I believe it was Socrates who said, (paraphrasing) 'say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.' And I was nothing for a long time.

It took years to learn how to raise my hand again; and even longer still to raise it without fear.