There are often times when I am truly thankful that my anxiety is not worse.
It's very easy to get caught up in ones own head, but I function. I get up, I work, I pay bills, I leave the house (sometimes I don't have the house, but you do what you can). Some of my nearest and dearest have anxiety that strikes far worse than I, that is well and truly debilitating, and I'm thankful that my darkest days are few and far between.
I'm also angry (see: previous post, re: preggers rage).
I know that at my worst I am useless. At my worst, I will not leave the house, I will not get dressed, I will shut off the phone and yell at the animals for no good reason and cry all day. I will hyperventilate, and throw up, and fall apart. And unless I become so terribly, terribly self destructive that I become a danger to myself or other, and willingly commit myself to the ER, no one will do anything for me. The system - the health care system, the mental health system, the government system - will not recognize how debilitating it is unless I motivate myself to make calls, seek professionals, get diagnosed, get notes and forms and medication and support networks.
The ironic (sad?) thing is, none of that is even remotely possible when you're sitting on the couch in two day old clothes, surrounded by klenex and dirty dishes, covered in your own tears and snot and sometimes vomit. The last thing you are going to do is make the dozens of phone calls necessary to get help. Because in that moment help doesn't matter and you don't deserve it.
Now, I am thankful that this is an experience I do not have often. Thank god for therapy. But that doesn't mean my anxiety is cured, or ever will be. Currently, I'm no longer on my meds, and full of crazy pregnancy hormones, so the anxiety has been rearing it's ugly head and trying to take over. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't feel anxious, or down-right panic stricken.
Imagine walking around, feeling like the worst thing you could imagine is going to happen to you today, at some point, any moment, all the time. It makes doing simple things, like mailing a letter or going to the bank, feel like insurmountable tasks that very well may bring about the end of the world. Heaven forbid something outside of your normal routine were to happen. The universe would implode.
I'm lucky. I'm pregnant. Which means I get a free pass on almost everything. I've managed to side step meetings and avoid confrontations by the simple expedient of faking a sudden attack of nausea. Usually, it doesn't take much to fake it, since the anxiety makes me feel sick anyway. Sometimes the fake dashes to the washroom turn into real ones. But there's a very good reason why I abuse the crap out of my pregnancy symptoms.
If I say that I am unable to do something due to my anxiety, I am immediately thought less of and dismissed as making it up. Now that's absurd. My fake pregnancy symptoms are taken as par for the course, but my real anxiety symptoms are discarded as cop-outs. I've tried to adopt a mental attitude of being truthful about mental distress. It's my sincere belief that mental illness is the last bastion of stigmatization (as is often said within the industry). I truly believe that I am not the only one on my floor who suffers from some form of mental distress, and if we were more willing to be honest and talk about it, perhaps we could being about some education and understanding so these mental foibles are not dismissed and are taken as seriously as they are experienced.
However, it feels like I'm just insisting loudly that the sky is blue, while everyone around me laughs and says that it's green. There comes a time when a sense of self preservation kicks in, and you begin to wonder just how crazy they think you are when you try and explain, "Sorry, the chemicals in my brain don't process data like yours do, so the fact that you're asking me to go to a meeting I've never gone to and do something I've never done before is actually making my hyperventilate... No I'm not faking it just to get out of going... Yes I actually want to go, but no I physically can't."
After a while, you just start saying to yourself, "Fake it till you make it." And hope you don't die in the meantime. The problem with this mantra is it destroys a little piece of your soul everytime you use it. I shouldn't have to fake it. I shouldn't have to abuse my pregnancy to legitimize my experiences. I shouldn't be here. But I am.
So I'll just keep faking it till I make it. One step at a time.
