I'm Still Trying To Find It

The other night I called my mom at almost 3 in the morning because I truly felt like I couldn't breathe. I had acid reflux as a kid and for some reason it's coming back to bite me in the ass as a 20 year old and presenting itself through very scary symptoms : aka feeling like my throat is closing and that I can’t breathe.

I know, it sucks.

I have an accumulation of notes in my phone that state that date and the time and then I write down what I am feeling both mentally and physically, this is for whenever I am having a flare up from acid reflux or having a panic attack - both make me feel like I am going to die.. These notes usually look a lot like “I don’t know why this keeps happening to me, this never used to be an issue” and then I go on back to typing out what exactly I am feeling in hopes that by the time I am done writing I will feel a little bit better than I did before.

Anyways, as I was on the phone with my mom freaking out and mentally debating if I should check myself into the ER (thank God I didn’t) I ended up completely breaking down to my mom (which actually did not help that fact that I couldn't breathe in the first place) “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME” “I SPENT 18 YEARS OF MY LIFE BEING COMPLETELY FINE” “WHY DID THIS START TO HAPPEN RECENTLY” “I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW THIS JUST STARTED UP AGAIN OUT OF THE BLUE”. Etc, etc, etc. you get the point, I'm pissed because I lived my life without any of these issues for so long and then all of sudden I got hit in the face with them like a pound of bricks.

But at least it gave me something to write this blog about, right?

Mental illness. I know, I know, maybe you feel like it's over talked about, maybe you even feel like it's been dramatized, or maybe you just have no idea what it's like to struggle with something like this so therefore you can absolutely not relate at all to what I am saying. Nevertheless, I'm gonna talk about it.

In all honesty I am so angry with God sometimes that I scream at him asking him what the reason was for giving me crippling anxiety for a 19th birthday present. It seems to me that I was so completely fine for so much of my life. I didn't even know what anxiety was. I was careless, I didn't think about things the way I do now. When covid happened, everything seemed like it went to shit, which makes sense because everything was so unsure. There was uncertainty, and in that uncertainty and the time frame of being alone and isolated for so long, mental illness had time to grow. I don’t truly know what started first, I just know that I began to have panic attacks and began to feel the physical symptoms of what I would call anxiety. I began double checking every single sign of any kind of illness on my body. Cancer, tumors, disease, you name it. Google was my best friend and worst enemy, I was diagnosing myself left and right, I was convincing myself that I had everything Google said I did - I was drawing a sharpie on every bruise I had to see when they went away, and counting them making sure I didn't get anymore overnight.

And as health anxiety grew so did general anxiety.

One thing I am so thankful for is the fact that I never have had any form of social anxiety. But since I didn't have that, what the hell was going on? I was getting these headaches, I was always short of breath, I couldn't get a deep breath in sometimes even though I wasn't even anxious about anything. It was so confusing. I got to school my sophomore year and there was times in the middle of the night that I went to the emergency room because I thought I was dying and all I needed was a fucking xanax. Now THAT'S embarrassing. Nothing will humble you more than getting all the xrays and blood tests in the world and the doctor telling you “I think you should maybe get on some medications”

So I started going to doctors, I got prescribed two separate anxiety medications exactly one year apart and never took 1 single pill. I didn't even pick up the prescription for the second one. I'm not a fan of anxiety medications or any medications in general but the first time I was prescribed medication I simply did not take them because I was TOO ANXIOUS TO. you're kidding me. Nevertheless, I'm now almost 21 years old raw dogging this illness trying to heal myself as I go. It's not healed. It hasn't gone away. But it's better. And that's all the hope I need for the future. Even if I still have to go to the doctors to get an EKG on my heart because I swear that time when I was really hungover and my heart was beating too fast was a symptom of heart problems.

But WAIT! That is not where this blog ends. The screaming fits at my ceiling when i'm on the floor sobbing and yelling and asking why on earth do I deserve this did not stop. Those still happen, and they happen frequently. I often find myself writing in my journal that I can’t seem to find a reason for this pain. There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Why am I anxious to do things that I could once do without thinking twice?

It's often a question we seem to ask ourselves at some point in our lives : what did I do to deserve this?

I ask this question all of the time about everything that happens. Why me? Feeling sorry for myself is comfortable, it's familiar, living in a self destructive mindset feels good. It begins to get easier and easier to focus on all the bad things that are going on in my life and everything that has ever happened to me. I have it so hard, woo is me. At least I have an excuse to stay in bed all day and not do anything, you know, since my life is SO hard.

I'm not excusing my pain and the issues I do face. I've been there, I've felt like I didn't have a right to feel the way I did because look at everything I have around me - what am I complaining for? When My best friends brother died via suicide, regardless of the fact that he felt like family, I had this strong feeling of guilt in my stomach. I didn't deserve to be affected by this. I felt like since he was not my brother by blood, the sadness I was feeling so strongly had to just be for attention purposes. I didn't let myself grieve in the right way because I convinced myself I had no right to feel the way I did.

But pain is pain. What is so small to some people can be huge for others. That is why comparing your pain to someone else's is so pointless. If you take two people, one who has never been through anything hard, and the other who has faced struggles their whole life, a bump in the road is going to be major for the first and minor for the other. That doesn't mean the first person doesn't deserve to feel the pain caused.

But what does kick you while you are already down is letting yourself marinate in the illness longer than it is welcomed for. I'm not saying rush your healing process, I'm not telling you to just look on the bright side when you are depressed. What I am saying is when there is an option to get out of bed and become the person you want to be, or stay under the covers convincing yourself that there is no meaning to your life and that everything bad happens to you, make your bed. Wash your sheets and stay out of your room until they are done. Lock your bedroom door and give someone else the key for the day. You are never going to regret helping yourself up when you feel like you are glued to the floor.

So why do you? Why me? Why did I become so mentally ill when I never was. Why did this have to happen to me during the years that are supposed to be the best years of my life?. I wish I had the answer for us. I wish I had the answer to everything. But I've come to accept that I don't know the answer to all of these questions that so many people ask.

But there has to be a reason right? Maybe that reason is to be able to overcome challenges we would have previously never faced. I like to look at my anxiety as something that gives me the opportunity to overcome shit that I never thought I could. I went to six Flags yesterday with my roommates and I was so petrified to go on this one ride. I went into the day knowing that I wasn't going to go on it because of the fear I had in me. I was gonna wait for them to ride the ride and hold their bags and take pictures. But something told me to just do it. I didn't back out, I didn't back out when the ride BROKE DOWN, I didn't let my mind tell me that because of this mechanical issue, I had to leave the line. We were the first group to go after 30 minutes of waiting for whatever issue to be fixed. I was being tested. So I may have held my best friends for the entire ride, and I just may have had a minor panic attack on the way up and cried just a little, but I DID IT. now this seems small, it does, but what I'm getting at here is the bigger picture

Everything you ever want is on the other side of fear

No matter how big, no matter how small, no matter what you are anxious or what you feat, face it head on

It's much easier said than done. It’s much easier for me to say just do the damn thing than it is to actually get up and do it. But our minds are really f’ing good at convincing us the worst of things. Our minds tell us that we are going to fail, that things are not going to work out. They tell us that whatever could go wrong, is going to happen. But we are stronger than our minds because we control our thoughts. If you have to tell yourself something silly and stupid to get over something, do it. Mind over matter. Mind. over. Matter. If you have to take baby steps, take baby steps. If you have to do something for yourself, do it for yourself.

But whatever you do, don’t let your mind convince yourself that you don't get to live the life you deserve to live. And stop letting the lyrics from all too well get to you.

“I want to be my old self again, but i'm still trying to find it”

You never lost it.