I've avoided writing this for so long. I've started this piece three times, re-downloaded Grammarly, changed my blog layout, changed it back, and pretended to be researching by reviewing my entire camera roll. I'm done hiding now. I'm ready to tell the truth, to stop hiding behind half-truths.
I haven't written in way too long now and I keep telling myself (and everyone else) that it's because I have nothing to say. At surface level, that's true, but deeper down I know there's still plenty to be said for where I am right now. I pretend it's all rainbows and butterflies around here, so there's nothing to write home about. In truth, it's more rain and caterpillars, and sunshine and chrysalises (does that even make sense?) It's good with the bad, it's summer with the humidity, it's a chocolate brownie with walnuts. The good is easy to talk about - it's achievements and successes and moments I'm truly proud of. The bad, however, is harder than ever to share. In the past, bad was most of what made up my consciousness, it was front and centre and talking about it came easy because it was all that was expected from me. Now, it feels like the bad is barely considered because it's barely shown, even if that's my own overactive imagination assuming what others think. I worry that I've shown so much of my good days that no one (that's friends, family and all the way to strangers across the internet) have this picture of me being healthy and ready for anything.This terrifies me for only one reason - expectation.
When you're openly ill, mentally or otherwise, expectations are low. You're left to call your own shots and there's no surprise on the faces of others when "no" is the response to an offer that you aren't ready for. When your illness is less present, easier to manage and easier to hide, it feels like expectations skyrocket. Suddenly, "no" is no longer an option, or at least it doesn't feel like it is. The world has seen your success and it wants to be a part of it. Making self-care choices becomes a rarity when you want to please others, when you have no real reason not to. When the world has seen you succeed at so much, it doesn't understand why you don't always want to be excelling. It expects you to be choosing to push at every opportunity and can't make heads nor tails of it when you choose comfort over progress sometimes. It expects you to have outgrown that. It's disappointed when you want to stand still for a moment, and disappointment is the hardest reaction to face up to.
As I stand here on the precipice of turning 22, I find myself nostalgic for the year gone by, undoubtedly the most progressive, successful year of my life (on my June to June brain calendar). I share the occasional highlight on social media, but I try to keep it to a minimum because I like to keep it realistic (and the crippling fear of others thinking I'm completely fine). In this post I've been avoiding like the plague, I want to finally gloat a little. I want to show the world how proud I am and how possible recovery is, eventually. But I'd be doing myself a disservice if I didn't tell the truth and reveal the darker moments, the truths I've been hiding. I owe it to myself for the year to come, a year I have no doubt will be even more progressive than the last, to go into it with honesty, and offer the world some realistic expectations for what's to come. Maybe somehow, by being raw here, I'll calm my expectation-fearing soul.
In May of 2018, I suffered what I like to call "an episode" - a series of consecutive days where anxiety plagues my body. The day after booking my driving theory test, I found myself in a constant panic wave that never crested. That's what they don't tell you about living with panic attacks - I'd rather have a full attack and see it finish (because your body can't sustain high stress like that for long) than be trapped in this constant mediocre panic feeling that never peaks. The anxiety was maintaining itself inside me, feeding on itself, but never reaching high enough to come back down. I was terrified, unable to move or function. I felt sick to my stomach (I kind of hate that phrase, of course, it's to my stomach) and desperately tried to be sick, just to get it over with, but that wasn't what my body was trying to do.
When you're anxious, your body shuts down your digestive system because it's a waste of blood and energy that could be used in your muscles to fight or run from the threat. This innate reaction is useless in modern times when we aren't often running from or fighting the things we're afraid of. It just creates nausea, a futile feeling at best, but never anything more. It's no benefit to your evolution to be sick when you're under threat.
This lasted a few days, during which I shook uncontrollably, ate dry pieces of bread and hid away from the world. If you check my social media, you'll see no sign of this, because I didn't want to share it. It wasn't fun, it wasn't pretty and it wasn't something I was proud of.
I pulled myself out of it though. I never cried once. Looking back, I'm grateful to this phase for hurting me so deeply that I vowed never to go back. I canceled my driving theory test less than 24 hours after the booking and prepared myself to start learning to live all over again. Dizziness set in after my week of nausea subsided and lasted until February. I was spaced out, unsteady on my feet and my vision was disturbed.
There's no rhyme or reason for the symptoms that present in a hyper-stimulated body. It picks and chooses which physical aspects of anxiety presents as and when it wants. Hyper-stimulation is something I simply have to learn to live with, at least for a few years now, until my body has been adrenaline free for a long time. Every day features some level of anxiety for me, especially now that I'm working so hard on bettering myself, and this means flooding myself with adrenaline on a daily basis. Hyper-stimulation is the name for the state your body enters when it has been subjected to so much adrenaline so regularly that it no longer returns to a calm state, even when you're feeling mentally calm. At any given moment, my body is behaving as if I'm under threat. This presents itself in ways I never knew possible. Nausea comes from a constantly restarting digestive system. Dizziness comes from a lack of correct breathing and a continuous scrambling of the senses - which challenges your eyes and sense of balance. I get hiccups, headaches, body aches, unmanagable temperature changes, and rashes. Nothing about how I feel is "okay", but I'm okay.
This last year has been difficult. It's been laden with anxiety, physical symptoms I never expected and more challenges than I can count. I learned that even my worst anxiety doesn't hurt me, nothing I feel ever comes to the horrendous kind of conclusions I imagine. The problem is, in our multi-level brains, it's easy for our logical mind to know and understand something while our emotional subconscious stays doubtful. In my head, I know I'm safe, I know panic can't hurt me, I know anxiety isn't something to fear, but in my heart, sometimes it's harder to be certain.
In no particular order, in just one year my world had stretched to include; Sitting in cafe's all alone, taking Mia on walks for hours, miles from home, with no idea where we are or where we're going, taking buses whenever I'd like, taking those buses to wherever I want all alone, letting my ever so patient boyfriend take me on actual dates. I've taken trains, I've been to places I'd never been to before. My life is more open and free than I could have imagined this time last year.
In the last 6 months alone my life has become almost unrecognisable. In January, I passed my driving theory test. In February, I joined the volunteers at Parkrun and find myself going back every week. In March, I joined a weekly yoga class, yoga has been my saving grace regardless of how obnoxious it is, the first "class" I've been anywhere near since 2014. In June, I started my first real job. I get paid to do what I love, to write. Life has gotten a little hectic, and sometimes I still feel like I'm not ready for everything I've taken on, but for the first time in many years, I no longer feel like labeling myself as an anxious person. I feel alive and normal, and normal is bliss.None of these achievements would be quite so sweet if it weren't for the upsets and struggles I've had to go through to get there. None of this came easy, and most of it still isn't. There's no defined time it takes for a new experience to become less frightening, but I know it's an awfully long wait. After about 15 weeks at the Parkrun, I had my first panic attack in more than a year and a half just before the event. I still can't really understand why, but my body was fighting it as hard as it could. I was gagging and shaking and locked into my own body. Then it finished and I moved on. I went to the event and I behaved no differently than any other day. I have never had a panic attack that I've walked away from without any emotional scarring - until then. If that's not progress I don't know what is.
I booked my first driving lesson in March. I also canceled my first driving lesson in March. I felt nothing but dread and terror and there was no joy in the anticipation for me. Maybe I'd have come around if I stuck with it, but that's something I have to live with. I refuse to regret the decisions I make to protect myself if it was right at the time. Not every day has to be lived fearlessly. I've said yes to challenges more this year than ever, but I'm also more ready to forgive myself on days I have to say no.
I've taken more medications this year than I ever too, and I'm finally not afraid of that. A typical part of agoraphobic anxiety is a fear of taking medications, the fear that once it's in your body you have no control over what side effects might come. For the majority of the last few years, this included avoiding pain killers on my period and Lemsip when I had a cold. When the dizziness started to win, I decided to be brave. My doctor prescribed me Propranolol, a beta-blocker to help steady my heart and breathing. When nausea returned these last few months and I started to drink Gavison like it was water, I turned back to my doctor. Hiatus Hernia, he said. (You can look that up yourself.)I was given Omezparole, a proton-pump inhibitor which stops acid from being produced, to give my organs a chance to repair themselves.
Anxiety is a physical illness just as much as mental and I won't hear otherwise. When I say something is too difficult, it's because of the dread that comes with challenging yourself when your oesophagus is eating itself, or your brain is unable to steady your balance, not because I'm too nervous to step out of my comfort zone.
I suppose that's it. I didn't really expect this to descend into a science lesson but I'm glad it did. The honest truth is that I'm doing really well, thriving, I hesitate to say. I'm also struggling, almost every day, because I've never been so torn between wanting more and wanting to hide. It's easier to give up, to stay away from the pain because it feels safer in the knowledge I'm doing nothing to risk any anxiety, but that's not what I want and that means I'm going to have to hurt. I'm going to have to have more episodes, more panic attacks and more symptoms I don't deserve, but it's all in the name of progress.
So here's to 22, may it bring me discomfort and terror and pride and success. I'm ready now, I'm ready for what lies beyond.
