tothosewhohavelived-blog - Tumblr blog

tothosewhohavelived-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

I think I have an anxiety disorder. I say think because people seem to be against the whole “self-diagnosis” thing. Which is understandable, but after this long I can pretty firmly say I have GAD. Plus there are others who have told me “you’d know if you had it” s to be 100% honest, I do know.

You’re supposed to get help after six months, but I mean it’s been a little over two years now so I figured it’s about time I said something. Although that’s not exactly true, I have tried to tell you before; twice directly, and indirectly more than a handful of times. But I don’t blame you for not catching onto the indirect comments on it.

The first time I tried to tell you directly that I can remember wasn’t that long ago actually. It was only a few weeks after we moved into the house we were living in now, and you were in your room, Spiderweb was in the kitchen making dinner/watching Light and Chi, and I was in my room doing my homework. Or at least I had been, by this point I was having an anxiety attack actually. It was one of those attacks that rise up out of nowhere and take control of everything all at once.

Most everyone knows what a typical anxiety attack feels like, but those more often than not, have a cause. The kind I was experiencing at that moment was the kind that catches you off guard and appears for absolutely no reason. You can’t even attempt to logic yourself out of it because there was no real problem in the first place. But even if there was a reason, you couldn’t logic yourself out of it anyway. Your thoughts run in circles, yet at the same time your head feels empty and light. Your breath and heart rate start racing, your chest feels tight, and panic, frustration, and terror combine as your eyes begin to feel with tears. As they spill onto your cheeks they don't feel like they belong. They feel as if they’re someone else’s, yet you know that they are very much a part of you. “Anxiety does not define you” as many say, but it can control your life and change you into something that is not you, and it can overpower you to the point where you feel like nothing other than a skeleton surrounded by your own fear and terror constructed by yourself. And as you feel the first tear roll down your face, the terror of someone seeing you like this sets in. An additional wave of anxiety comes to join the party as you realize there’s nowhere to hide. You realize your door has no lock. You realize you’re stuck in the middle of your room. You realize anyone could walk in at any moment and find you like this, vulnerable and weak. It’s the opposite of feeling like the wall’s are gonna close in, you’re out in the open, for anyone to see you and witness how miserable and pathetic you feel. Yet even though you’re out in the open, you’re in a cage. A cage constructed by your own brain, a cage you could escape. If only you knew how. Which makes you wonder if it’s even possible anyway. But you struggle, desperately trying to break out of that cage, you have to get out of that cage before someone finds you stuck in it. The struggling only causes you to be stuck in that cage more secure than before. But you continue to push against the cage.

And then you called me. You asked me to come into your room. But I had to take the cage with me. There was absolutely no way to leave it. That month in particular was really bad for me in terms of anxiety.

I would have at least one anxiety attack per day, most often two or three, days with even more were rare, and the days with none were fewer than that. I’m worried it sounds like I’m exaggerating when I say that, but it was really that miserable. So I tried to tell you, but you just told me I needed a break from homework so I could calm down. Which may have been true, but that wasn’t the most important part of what was happening. Sometimes not telling you that I have an anxiety disorder gives me additional anxiety than I would have generally. Especially when I have really really bad anxiety for a week plus. Mainly because I feel trapped.

I don’t know how to get help/help myself as of now. My friends don’t know either. Every once in a while I tell myself that I’m gonna talk to a school counselor but the thought is honestly terrifying. I’m afraid I’ll either go there and shut down completely, or that I’ll lie about everything. Or that when the time comes I won’t be able to go at all. So I haven’t tried.

But after the first time of trying to tell you I felt kinda discouraged to talk about it again. So I had to keep it hidden. I felt like you’d shrug it off again. Especially because it was so difficult to talk about it in the first place, but having to do it a second time felt like hell.

The second time I tried to bring it up wasn’t the best time. We were already in an argument when I brought it up. I tried to talk to you about my anxiety, but this time I went into more detail about the social aspect of it. Which is much different than being shy. Some people give me anxiety just by being there, which I feel terrible about because it’s not their fault, but when they're there I just feel absolutely terrible and on edge, and my pace quickens and I’m not sure why. I also experience sensory overload quite often, so sometimes I’ll be really frustrated by seemingly normal noises and sounds but only because everything feels like too much at that point. And because I share a room with Chi there, it’s really difficult to escape from all of that so I can get in the right state of mind. It’s really hard to ever get away. But when I tried to tell you this you just told me to “talk to more people because it will become easier”.

I need you to know that I can’t just “talk to more people”. I need you to know that the problem is much bigger than being shy. I need you to know that I wasn’t asking you for a solution and most importantly I need you to know that you’re not gonna be able to understand how I’m feeling 100%.

I don’t want you to, and I don’t need you to. I just need you to listen and realize that this is extremely difficult for me. Because there isn’t really an easy solution. If there was I’m sure I would’ve found it by now. And trust me I’ve looked, as have a few of my friends. But sometimes looking for answer and solutions and reassurance than I’m not alone lease me to an anxiety attack because I realize how helpless I really am. And it felt weird saying I had an “anxiety disorder” at first. I guess I was afraid of people not believing me, and I’d be stuck with no help and it wouldn’t be my fault because at that point I couldn’t blame myself for not being honest about it. So I researched it, a lot, to make sure I wasn’t jumping to conclusions. I’m really not. I took so many medical quizzes but I mean obviously you discredit those and not agree with me until there’s a professional evaluation, if that were to even happen. But I think that after keeping a close eye on it for two years it’s not exactly like I recklessly decided to label myself with an anxiety disorder. It’s not like I want it. In fact, for a while I wouldn’t even tell myself that I had anxiety because it felt like as soon as I admitted it to myself it was over.

And no one ever understands it at first, or how to help in the slightest, but I’d just like to be more open about it with you and for you to take it seriously this time. When I told Theboywithstarsforeyes at first he had no idea how to react, he’d had no experience with this at all, but now he’s the one who helps me the most .

I feel like this letter’s all over the place, it’s difficult to organize my thoughts on all of this. So I’ll get back to the last two weeks.

Me anxiety has been better for the last few days, but exactly before it was absolute hell. I just wanted to stay in my room all day, several anxiety attacks per day, I never wanted to eat, I only talked to two of my friends which hurt another. But talking to her had been stressful so it just gave me another excuse to not socially interact with someone. And I didn’t want to focus on my anxiety, so I pushed it away and she was upset that I didn’t have anything to talk about with her. But the only thoughts I had were about anxiety, and everything else was just me trying to distract myself from those thoughts. So we did end up arguing with me about it, I was trying to make my life easier because it was already miserable when I wasn’t focusing on it, but she wanted me to talk to her anyway. And another reason I didn’t want to talk to her about it was because lately words have been mixed up in my head. It was a challenge to talk before, but it was even worse then. I would type out text and then have to reread it several times before sending because I wasn’t sure if all of the words were there or if they were in the right order or not. And talking verbally I would continually say the wrong word, or mix up the order of my words/letters in a word while talking. So I was really worried that I would mess up like that, plus it was frustrating to have to deal with myself.

Some of my friends had even been telling me that I was depressed when I’m like 99.99999999999% sure that I’m not. People I would talk to you for less than five minutes would ask me if I was okay because I seemed dead inside or sad or emotionless. Which would just remind me that I wasn’t okay. But I certainly wasn’t depressed. But as soon as anyone thought I was depressed they wanted to help. Even you started to ask my if I was okay more often after that one phone call where I argued with my friends that I wasn’t depressed.

But that just makes me feel even more alone. Maybe that would help if I had depression, but I don’t. I have GAD and not many people seem to be helping me with that or noticing. But I don't feel like me and I haven’t for a very long time, and I wish you would notice.

I wish you would listen.

1 note · View note