Being Your Own Hero

(The countless posts that have appeared on the mainstream blogs about depression and anxiety are beginning to draw more attention toward the fact that there are a lot of people who are living with some form of mental illness. I read almost every one that pops up on social media, and subsequently the ones that are linked at the bottom of those articles as well. And while these authors have all done a great job of describing their own experience, none of them have quite pinpointed where I'm at in life with my own mental health. Just in the past few months, I've begun to speak more openly about my past issues with depression, and current issues with anxiety.)

For a while this year, I thought that my depression was something I would not be able to pull myself out of; I found myself in a place more terrifying than I could have ever imagined, much worse than the last time I had gone through a bad bout of depression. I wasted months hating myself for choices I had made, disrespecting my body because I no longer felt like it belonged to me, and being angry at myself for not having the strength or willpower to fight. I stopped caring about everything in my life - school, friends, my health, living in general. There was nothing anyone could say or do that would make me want to try.

With my depression causing me to care less about everyday life, it ignited a spark with my anxiety, and suddenly I was living in a room engulfed in flames with no doors to escape. The whole place was burning to the ground. I was watching it burn, and even when the smoke made it hard to breathe, I didn't try to put out the fire. It grew to the point where I was huddled in a corner, scared to move yet not afraid of death. And somehow I managed to take a deep breath and call the one person who was always putting out fires for me - my mother.

It was a lot of crying on my part, and I still don't think I was ready to get help. I didn't know what I even wanted from her when I called. I think I just needed someone to tell me everything was going to be okay, even though I was sure it wasn't. (After all, when we're sick we always want our mothers to take care of us.) That was my first step toward recovery. There were many days afterward that I wished I hadn't spoken up, and I still flirted with the idea of death every day for a while. I was nowhere close to being okay yet, but telling someone what I was going through was a start.

Honestly I'm not sure when it happened. Maybe a switch flipped inside of me one day, or maybe it was a gradual progression that led to it. All I know is that I woke up and decided that I was stronger than this, and that I deserved a better life than the one I had been putting myself through. I was tired of being broken and defeated, I was done feeling like my life didn't matter. Months of exhaustion had beaten me down, and I finally wanted to live.

Some people aren't so lucky. Some people sit in their burning rooms and let the fire burn them alive. For us, death isn't something to fear. The fear comes from knowing that you should be feeling pain from the fire, but feel nothing. We just want to feel something that makes us believe life is worth fighting for. For me, I could feel the heartache I would be putting my family through. They're what kept me alive.

People say it gets easier. That eventually, things will get better. That may be true. But if there's anything I have learned, it's that you can't expect someone else to save you. The people who love you and care about you will try, sure. But at the end of the day when you are alone in that room with no door to escape, they don't have a door to get in either. You have to be the one who breaks down that wall and chooses to save yourself, because if you aren't willing to fight to stay alive then what's the point in continuing to live?

I have never felt more free than I do today. There are still days that I worry I will find myself in that burning room again. It terrifies me to think that I ever let myself end up there in the first place, let alone that someday that switch might flip again without warning. But today I am alive. That might not sound like much of an accomplishment to some, but if only you knew how close those flames were to reaching my skin... I called for help just in time, and I am thankful that I did.

It's fine, I'm fine

I wasn't sure how to say this. I rewrote this at least half a dozen times, and even now I'm not sure I'm using the right words. There are others who have said it much more gracefully than I ever could, and sometimes I'm not sure why I bother to write anymore when I know my words don't mean anything. But then again, that's probably just the depression talking, right?

Lately my emotions have been a roller coaster. One minute I'm feeling fantastic and could not imagine living a life other than the one I have, and then the next minute I'm in this pit that I can't crawl out of and everything that I say is very Negative Nelly. I'll be driving and notice how beautiful the world is, and I get lost in the colors of the leaves changing and have this renewed appreciation for life, and for a few minutes, I feel great. But then I remember that every high comes with an even worse low, and when I reach the peak, I feel myself slowing down and about to drop fast.

And then the panic hits.

I've shared my experiences with anxiety, and when it acts alone, it can be manageable to an extent. But when my anxiety crosses over with my depression, I can't function. I quite literally can barely get myself to move from my couch to my bed or from my bed to the shower. When I do make it to the shower, I sit in the tub and just stare up at the water falling down on me. I'll sit there and let scalding hot water burn my skin so that I can feel something, anything, until the water runs cold and I'm forced to retreat back into my bedroom. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I have enough energy to at least put on clothes and brush my hair before curling into a ball and burrowing into the sheets.

People are very set on ending the stigma of mental health, myself included. It's great to feel like you can openly share your story without fear of judgment; I never would have been able to write about this so candidly when I experienced these things in high school. One thing in particular I've noticed that others are trying to squash is the idea that depression isn't always sitting in a dark room with your head in your hands, looking defeated. I'll say that again, because this is important: Depression isn't always sitting in a dark room with your head in your hands, looking defeated.

But sometimes it is.

There are days when I can hold myself together, or at least until I get home, and I appear just as happy and normal as any other person. But more often than not the past few months, I have days when I start crying for no reason and the numbness becomes so overwhelming that I don't feel like I'm in my own body anymore. And, once again, the panic hits.

At first it was only once or twice a month. Then it was every week. Now it is almost every day, sometimes more than once a day. I've reached out to people when I've felt myself lose my footing and start to fall, but even the ones who can relate don't offer much help. I swallowed my pride and asked my parents for help on more than one occasion, but they seem to be just as unsure about what to do with me as I am.

I've missed nearly half of my classes, I've dropped some, and almost every assignment has either been late or not turned in at all. My responsibilities to my sorority and to Panhellenic have been put on the back burner this semester, and I've failed to be the version of myself that I promised them I would be. I have taken two new Littles under my [broken] wing along with my previous one, and I'm terrified of disappointing the three of them by not being the Big they deserve. My job performance has been on a downward slope; I'm lucky if I make it through an entire shift that I'm scheduled for, and it's amazing that I show up at all anymore.

I don't want to live life this way, and some days I just don't want to live at all.

It's hard to wake up every morning. It's hard to listen to my friends talk about their problems when I don't feel like I am capable of offering solid advice at this point in my life. It's hard to go to work and have to smile at people, whether they are strangers or friends, and to act like I am okay and that I am handling this. It's hard to keep breathing when my head keeps telling me it would be easier not to.

Part of me wants to get better. I want to be the person that everyone wants me to be. I want to be someone that my Littles and my younger sister can look up to be and be proud of. I want to be able to look in a mirror without being disappointed at what I see. But the other part of me feels so hopeless, helpless, lost. I don't know if it's possible to overcome this, despite everyone telling me it is. And honestly, I'm tired of hearing them all try to be so positive all the time.

You're stronger than this, they say. You will get through this. It gets better. Fake it til you make it.

"Fake it til you make it" is actually the worst advice you could ever give someone who is dealing with a really bad bout of depression. Every single time someone says this to me, I want to punch them in the face. I understand that's how some people deal with minor issues in life (Oh, he broke up with you and you're sad? Fake being happy until you actually are!), but pretending to not be struggling every single day with my depression is what I've done for over a decade. If it hasn't worked in nearly thirteen years, what makes you think it will work now? You can't hide from depression. You can't fake being happy and just hope that eventually you will be okay. It doesn't work that way.

I wish I could tell you what would make this better, but if I knew then I wouldn't be sick anymore, would I?

Stress v. Anxiety

Being stressed about normal things in life is not the same as having an anxiety disorder. Let me tell you what it's like for me to have an anxiety disorder (coupled with depression).

I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is mentally make a list of all the things I didn't accomplish yesterday and last week, plus the things I need to have done for the day and upcoming week. Thinking about everything I have on my to do list overwhelms me, and I end up staying in bed until I absolutely have to get up and attempt to tackle these tasks. I set four or five separate alarms because although I should wake up at 5:30, realistically I won't wake up until 6:30.

Once I'm out of bed, I have to rush getting ready because I'm almost always running late at this point. Usually I have to be at work by 7am, or on campus by 8am. I am not a morning person, and it shows. Knowing I look as crappy as I feel makes me worry about how others will perceive me. Generally I get the comments of "wow, you look tired" or "are you feeling okay?" because for some reason people don't seem to realize how insulting it is for me to hear that. As if I don't feel bad enough at 7am, they like to remind me that I look bad too.

While at work I struggle to focus on what I should be doing. It's hard to stay on task when there are so many other things I need to do. Instead, I think about the fact that my paycheck will barely pay my rent this month, let alone my gas and food for two weeks. It's always paycheck to paycheck, and I have to start saving for my sister's wedding. I feel like I don't work enough, but my schedule won't allow me to work more than I already am. My second job will start soon, and that will add even more stress to my life.

When I finally have a short break to try to get homework or something else done, I procrastinate. The list grows; it's always too daunting for me to even try. I don't have the motivation, and then I start to worry that I'll never get anything done and consequently never graduate college and never get anywhere in life. So I stress eat.

After stress eating, I feel even worse. I think about how poorly I'm treating my body, but how at the same time I don't even care because I already look terrible anyway (I look "tired", remember?) and it doesn't matter if I get fat because nobody will ever love me anyway. Cue the tears from knowing that my divorce is completely my fault; I can't do anything right, including allowing someone else to love me enough that I learn how to love myself too. Everything that has gone wrong is because of me, and how could anyone want to be with someone who can't keep herself composed?

Then I start thinking about Matt and how much I blame myself for what happened to our friendship right before he died. I never got a chance to fix things, and I hate myself for it every day. I get so upset with myself that everything starts pouring out, and I can't hold it back any longer.

Once I'm crying, I can't stop. My chest gets tight, and I start to hyperventilate because I can't breathe, my heart is racing, and I am freaking out. The world is pushing on me and I don't have the strength to push back, so I curl into a fetal position and let it crush me. Everything hurts. My bones ache from the weight, my muscles spasm from the prolonged tension, my lungs collapse without oxygen. I can't feel my legs. I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my face. The numbness takes a while to fade once my panic attack ends, but my body shakes for a while.

I eventually get my breathing under control, and go to my meeting for Panhellenic. For two hours I fight to be active in the meeting, and it's much harder than I like to admit. I often ask people to repeat things because I couldn't focus on what they said, or didn't realize they were speaking to me. I remember that I still look as bad as I feel, and I worry that they are thinking the worst things about me and my lack of ability to appear professional and keep my composure in front of others. I focus too hard on trying to focus, and get lost. My inability to admit that I'm struggling with every aspect of my life causes me to continue to take on more responsibility than I can handle, and I mentally kick myself for volunteering to help with so many things.

After the meeting ends, I go home. And rather than dealing with my to do list, I put it off again and watch Netflix. While trying to recover, I tweet about the difficult day I'm having. I might even text a friend or two, my way of asking for comfort or help or guidance. Nobody can/will come over. Unsure if it's because they don't care or what, the loneliness sinks in. I worry that I am annoying them with my friendship, or if they even consider me a friend. My existence must not be too important, so I ignore them. I don't answer texts or tweets or snapchats. I lay in bed and consider how much better off they would be without me, if I stopped trying to be their friend and just disappeared.

I decide thinking this way is too depressing and I don't want another panic attack, so I go to bed. I'm exhausted, and have so much to do still. As I'm laying in bed I add more to my list of things to do, but I'll do it all tomorrow. I always tell myself I'll do it tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes.

So please, tell me how meditation or religion or whatever other bullshit will help. Please tell me how you "overcame anxiety" by just pushing through it and making a to do list and doing it one thing at a time. Tell me how they have medication for people like me, because I obviously need to be put on something since I can't function like a normal person. I love hearing all of those things because it's such great advice for dealing with something that most people don't understand unless they've dealt with it firsthand.

This is why I am the way I am. I don't ask to feel this way. This is just a description of my worst days though; I have plenty of good days too where it isn't this intense. Granted, my good days usually are similar to my bad ones, they just don't involve a panic attack.

I don't need your pity. I don't need your advice. I just need you to understand and accept me as I am.