My anxiety and depression go hand-in-hand with each other, which means that each anxiety attack is followed by a long, depressive episode. I can usually recognize the triggers of each anxiety attack: a financial crisis, a long research paper due in only a few days, a big move from one apartment to another. But it's the depressive episodes that normally catch me off guard, if not immediately preceded by an anxiety attack.

Not too long ago, I had my first major anxiety attack — the first one in months — and I felt myself losing control of the situation. It was a money-related anxiety attack, which led me to frantically search the internet for ways to make easy money fast. I was just about to look into plasma donations when the little voice in my head told me to go outside, take a deep breath, and relax.

The next day, I felt better. The sun was shining — I hadn't felt the sun on my skin in days and could feel my sadness melting away. I thought that that was it, I should be feeling better and not worrying so much.

That's what I thought.

A week later, I was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, hearing the recorded rain sounds on my Amazon Alexa device echoing through my empty room. I had just hung up after a two-hour-long FaceTime and had taken a Melatonin pill to force my mind into sleep, but I could feel that weird, odd feeling creeping up.

It was a depressive episode, brought on a week after my anxiety attack.

I felt that tightness in my chest and couldn't even lift my head up. The room in which I slept was bare, all except for boxes of clothes and my dog curled up in her bed on the floor. I felt like I didn't belong in my bedroom anymore and I felt deathly alone. My S.O. was a phone call away, but I couldn't bear to wake him with a phone call that would have started with, "I'm sad."

The sadness pulling me into my bed — this intense, sinking feeling — and the wave of sadness and exhaustion washed over me, and I finally shut my eyes at 3:45 a.m. When I woke, I felt even more tired than the night before, as this episode had sucked all the strength and life out of me.

I couldn't pin down exactly what caused it this time. I wasn't sure if it was the end of the summer semester and the final exams approaching, or if it was the lack of triple digits in my bank account or the fact that I was throwing the last three years of my life in boxes to be moved to a smaller townhome in a few weeks.

But when I sit down and look back, I could see the signs of the episode coming. I had refused to acknowledge the stress and anxiety that had been cooped up inside of me for so long, not letting myself properly vent and pretending that everything was OK. I have to realize that these episodes happen to me when I'm the most vulnerable from stress and sleep-deprivation, and I need to take a step back from everything and prioritize my responsibilities before I let them consume me.