Leave Me Alone

I told you to leave me alone. It's not because I don't love you, it's not because I don't want to be with you, it's not because you did anything wrong.
Fact: I am an introvert
Fact: I have social anxiety
Fact: When these two things combine, things get messed up, I freak out, feelings get hurt, tears are shed, villages burn, total death count rises.
Hear me out, this isn't a comfortable subject for anyone to talk about, much less an awkward teenage girl, but I feel like I need to share because I know there are many other people in this world who are just like me in the sense of being able to be with people, and maybe I want for myself to be validated and connect with them, or maybe I want to validate them and have them connect with me, I really don't know.
In eighth grade I started to feel this crippling sense of fear whenever I was expected to interact with someone who wasn't in my circle of friends or immediate family. At the time I chalked this up to being 13 and not fully understanding what to do with myself, but four years later feeling the same way means something totally different.
By sophomore year I realized that this sensation might be something really wrong, that now I was getting scared to be with my friends, that I felt a hundred times better alone than when I was with people, that I was working myself up so much hours, days, weeks before a party/date/other social situation that the actual experience rarely felt worth it.
I was "diagnosed" through a series of psychological exams and studies that really just tested my ability to be questioned, with generalized anxiety and depression in 2013. What this really means is that I am scared and sad a lot of the time.
When you ask me what I want to do and I respond by saying I want to go home, I mean it. For me and many other people, when I say I want to go home, it means that I am very close to collapse and need to be alone, whether that be taking a nap, reading, showering, watching TV, whatever, I need to be alone. When I don't answer my phone for a day or two, it's not because I'm dead, it's not because I'm in trouble and it got taken away, it's just because I need to be alone.
To those of you out there who don't know the feeling of needing your own space for a while, imagine starting each day with a ribbon around your lungs. Some days, you wake up and cannot feel it, others it squeezes you from the moment you open your eyes. When you get to school, the ribbon pulls tighter, when your shoulder brushes someone elses by accident, the ribbon pushes more air out of your lungs, when the lunch lady tells you to type your ID number in again, your lungs are being crushed, and by the time the school day is over you can hardly breathe and you really just want to be away from everyone.
This is the average. When there's a big event, say a school dance, it gets even worse.
When you put your dress on, the ribbon tightens, every time you look at yourself it gets tighter, each time you think about the actual dance it gets tighter, and this is all happening before you leave the house. Once you get to the auditorium, where the dance is held, you're so nervous that you just want to call it quits and go home, but your friends insist on you dancing, which pulls your ribbon tighter, now cutting through the skin around your ribs, they drag you onto the dance floor and you are paralyzed. Your ribs are broken, you cannot breathe, you cannot move, you know you're supposed to be dancing but your knees are locked and you feel the tears pooling in your eyes. You would leave but you can't abandon the boy you brought with you.
Finally you get home and you break down. Everything that could have happened in the auditorium happens right now while you're alone in your bedroom. You're shaking and crying and wondering why you have to be like this. At this moment, being alone is dangerous for you. Although you know you need to reach out to someone for help, you are too afraid to, so you're left in your own head to try to go it alone, and this is when my anxiety becomes crippling.

This Clock

I never was, am not, and never will be a morning person and I made the executive decision to buy the loudest most obnoxious analog alarm clock known to man. It sits behind my head as I type and ticks away the seconds and though it may not seem like much, these seconds are turning into minutes and hours and days and nights and weeks and months and years and decades and centuries and millennia.
Each tick is counting down the moments until I have to pick my feet up and bring them to school, counting up the seconds that I am spending without you at my side. Constantly showing my movement through time, and yes I know a clock shouldn't be this existential but each second passing is another second pushed from the front half of my life to the back half pushing me closer to adulthood and pulling me farther away from childhood and yes that is the epitome of teendom but I'm not quite used to it and oh god I am so much closer to being 20 than I am to being 10.
Each tick is pulsing through my ears like a percussive beat that is moving way too slowly and let's go faster I promise I can beat you in this race if my legs move any faster I might take off come on keep up your legs are longer than mine any ways