Tonight, I laid shaking in my bed, alternating between panicked sobbing and numb stoicism. I am riddled with a peculiar form of anxiety in which the fact that my life is currently wonderful gnaws guiltily in the pit of my stomach.
I have had medically diagnosed anxiety since I was three years old - the child psychologist my poor, confused mother took me to was just as perplexed as my parent. I was so young, and plagued with an intense emotional intelligence, ruinous capacity for introspection and an equally egregious capacity for analysis of the world around me.
This malfunction in my brain's hardwiring devastated my adolescence, dancing between depression, anxiety and bleak days where suicide beckoned me with the harrowing temptation of a sirens call. But, I decided to look into treatment beyond anxiolytic drugs just a handful of years ago - which lead me to nutrition, exercise, spiritual practice, meditation and energy healing modalities.
These things saved my life. I feel balanced on the vast majority of days - there will maybe be a moment where I stress a little more about a trivial matter than the average person, and I quickly reign myself in. Panic attacks. Episodes. They are scattered, few and far between and I have worked fucking hard to make it that way. And yet, when they whisper in my ear, a warning that they are approaching, bubbling up in the back of my throat, slamming my heart recklessly against my ribcage, hot tears pooling and brimming and flowing ... I can't stop it. I can't help it. I am in the middle of a dark ocean, and a fifty foot wave is approaching. I just hold my breath and let it toss me back and forth, waiting for the storm to pass.
And yet I'm asked "What do you have to be sad about?" or "Anxiety? About what?". To explain this to someone who has never felt it is like describing colour to someone born blind. To this day, my mother can't help but ask these questions and I don't blame her. It makes no fucking sense. "But honey, you have this and that, and this thing's going great." And all I can say is, do you ask the swimmer in the ocean why they summoned the storming ocean wave?
This need to explain things, to solve them. It's so human. We need answers. And people are uncomfortable with your imbalance. Don't be sad. Don't be worried. Don't kill yourself.
Thanks.
But this is dangerous for sufferers. It presses a branding iron to your already open wounds. How dare you feel bad when you have so much going for you. I am privileged. I am lucky. I have food, water, shelter. I have amenities, luxuries. Friendships, romance. I laughed just yesterday. Am I allowed to be anxious, to be depressed now? I have no reason ...
I'm here to tell you that you don't need a reason. Your brain is just a little deficient, maybe some neurotransmitter is in short supply, some interneural communication went awry. It doesn't matter. If you know someone who's suffering, I know it's frustrating - but sometimes people don't need you to solve their problems, they just need you to listen. It is a crushing, suffocating, lonely feeling and sometimes all you need is someone to hold you, physically hold you together when you feel the blades of your psyche ribboning you apart, someone to say "I hear you."
I'm here for you. I'm dedicating myself to being an advocate for you. All I want in this life is to help others who feel as hopeless as I have ... as I still do somedays. This is therapeutic for me. Guiding, healing others - it fills the cracks in my own soul.
I love my life, I wouldn't trade my brain for a "normal" one because theres two sides to every coin. A blessing and a curse. It's allowed me to think critically, speak poetically, be deeply aware and appreciative and empathetic. I wouldn't trade any circumstance, happenstance or event. I have a great life, and I get depressed. I have a great life, and I get anxious. And that? That is okay.
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