Everything is quiet, the lights are off, the air conditioning is at that perfect temperature, my covers are pulled up snugly around me, I’m comfortable and on the verge of falling asleep. Then, a rolling fog sets in; the once comfortable girl is now slowly sinking. The silence echoes, the Vantablack room perpetuates, and my body slowly freezes from the core underneath a fuzzy blanket and a thick duvet. The tears begging forming in my eyes, I try to push it all away, I futilely try to keep it from creeping in, but the fact is that it’s already here. As loneliness approaches I give in to the void, I allow the insomnia to set in to my already purplish eyes and I lie there, awake, and with tears in my eyes.
The reality of my situation is that I know I’m not alone. I have an amazing support system. My mother and father have always been very supportive of me and my dreams, my siblings encourage me, and I surround myself with positive people. My boyfriend for example is a dreamer; one of those people who make you believe the sky can be pink if you will it hard enough. My friends, though few, are ones I trust and know I can depend on. So why does this anxiety cripple me?
The “episodes” got worse and a bit more frequent since moving to college and actually feeling isolated, however they’ve been with me since my junior year of high school. I remember being in bed clutching myself tightly, rocking back and forth, and thinking: will this go away? My parents and everyone around me knew I was an anxious person. As a child this translated itself to being ecstatic and having a deep hatred for sleep, now as a grown woman living by herself in college I did not disclose the intimacies of my mind with anyone, no one knew I was having trouble sleeping, much less did they suspect the condition I was left in.
"People like me aren’t supposed to have ___." (in my case: anxiety attacks). How many times have you heard and told yourself that? Let me be honest, it’s an extremely posh sentence. When we say those things we think people who are in stable situations, people who have the type of support system I have, people who are seen as having their lives planned out and in order, people whose lives are coveted by those surrounding them. But there I was, awake, with tears in my eyes glaring into emptiness.
The stigma around having a mental breakdown was too much for me to seek for help the first years it happened. I thought that keeping it inside and ignoring it would make it go away, I thought I was being overly dramatic and that everyone nowadays is diagnosed with something to get put on medication and I wasn’t going to be that person, I was ok.
I was not okay.
It took a lot for me to admit to myself something was not right with what I was feeling, and an even longer time to seek help. It wasn’t enough to barely have a grip on my life; I had to actually feel like I was losing my essence, to fight to grasp myself again. I’m here; my life didn’t end because I told someone I wasn’t perfect and that the rose had thorns. My future is still very bright with the added beauty that I’m not afraid of losing my mind during my twenties. Seeking help didn’t make me a weaker person, only one who admires life enough to want to live it fully.
