I walked into the choir room and stood in the corner until my two best friends noticed the expression on my face. You wouldn’t know anything was wrong if you didn’t know me and had just seen me in the hall, but the second the words “Keegs, what’s wrong?” escaped their mouth, I broke out into a fit of sobs.

I didn’t even think I was going to cry, I was stressed, but it wasn’t that big of a deal because I’m stressed pretty much everyday of my life.

After I regained my composure, I apologized over and over again. That was my instinct, and always had been since I can remember.

Cry, apologize and keep apologizing until you cry again. Repeat.

It took me years and a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder to understand why I felt overwhelmed to a much greater extent so much faster than a lot of people.

I would resent myself for not being able to control my anxiety.

In the end, the event I was upset about actually didn’t matter. That B I made on a test truly wasn’t a big life altering deal. But the fact that I felt so guilty for being honest and upset, was.

If someone has an asthma attack, they don’t feel guilty or apologize for coughing—because they have a genetic disposition to asthma—because they can’t help it, and it’s not their fault. I didn’t understand that when I had a panic attack, it was a chemical imbalance. I couldn’t help it, and it wasn’t my fault.

I figured all this out while horseshowing in Michigan this summer. I was dealing with a pretty nasty break up, and my mind was very obviously elsewhere the first week of competition.

I wasn’t sleeping more than four hours every night or eating more than a meal a day. It was clear to everyone that a breakup wasn’t the only thing bothering me. I told everyone that I was fine until my trainer caught me in my horse’s stall, burying my head into his mane trying to hide my tears. I spiraled into my typical apologetic routine when she said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” she said. “I don’t know what happened, but there’s nothing wrong with not being okay. No one here thinks any less of you for showing emotion.”

Her words stopped me from feeling so guilty for struggling. They stopped me from hating myself every time I couldn’t just grit my teeth and deal with the breakup, or whatever the problem was that day.

It was completely illogical of me to hate myself because of a human inability to be happy every second of everyday.

I wish I could tell you that coming to terms with the idea that my anxiety isn’t a weakness magically fixed everything, and I rode off into the sunset with my horse and a bunch of blue ribbons– but I can’t. I can tell you it made everything bearable.

I can tell you that I started sleeping around six hours a night, and my appetite returned over the course of a month. I can tell you that I was okay with not being okay. I can tell you for the first time I can remember, I didn’t feel weak, I felt authentic. And to me, that was more valuable than pretending I was perfect.