#26
Posted: 1/28/14 at 12:34pm
I never get to talk about this. I've got a lot to say.
When I was thirteen I woke up one morning convinced I was going to get depression. I worried about it every day that entire summer, and of course by worrying about it I made it happen. That was the beginning of what has been a lifelong nightmare. I'm diagnosed with GAD and OCD, but what I always say about anxiety is that it's a shape shifter. Assuaging one worry gives birth to another. I have worried about the most insane stuff - the roof falling in, getting hit by a meteor, growing a penis (never admitted that one before), getting an eating disorder, being gay (it's actually it's own brand of OCD - HOCD, but I didn't know that then), dying, and on and on and on.
I got put on medication when I was sixteen after I got officially diagnosed but looking back I see that the signs were there all my life. I used to get yelled at in school because I would constantly touch my earrings to make sure that they hadn't fallen out. I recognize now that that was a compulsion.
But the most vicious, insidious facet of this whole mess is my sleep anxiety. I have had it for as long as I can remember. It chased me away from going away to school and follows me everywhere I go. I always tell people I can feel it sitting on my shoulders. It's been around so long it has a physical presence.
I've never really suffered that terribly from panic attacks, thank God, but I have had enough to have the deepest sympathy for people who do get them. My mother and sister also have this awful disorder, and the worst thing about it for me is my complete inability to to relate to them. I will go to pieces if a television is on in the house when I'm trying to sleep, but my sister's fear of getting on a crowded subway car infuriates me. It comes with the isolation of the sickness. Things make sense in the vicious, abusive set of rules my brain chemistry insists I live by, but the set my sister's brain imposes upon her seems completely trivial.
When I was thirteen I woke up one morning convinced I was going to get depression. I worried about it every day that entire summer, and of course by worrying about it I made it happen. That was the beginning of what has been a lifelong nightmare. I'm diagnosed with GAD and OCD, but what I always say about anxiety is that it's a shape shifter. Assuaging one worry gives birth to another. I have worried about the most insane stuff - the roof falling in, getting hit by a meteor, growing a penis (never admitted that one before), getting an eating disorder, being gay (it's actually it's own brand of OCD - HOCD, but I didn't know that then), dying, and on and on and on.
I got put on medication when I was sixteen after I got officially diagnosed but looking back I see that the signs were there all my life. I used to get yelled at in school because I would constantly touch my earrings to make sure that they hadn't fallen out. I recognize now that that was a compulsion.
But the most vicious, insidious facet of this whole mess is my sleep anxiety. I have had it for as long as I can remember. It chased me away from going away to school and follows me everywhere I go. I always tell people I can feel it sitting on my shoulders. It's been around so long it has a physical presence.
I've never really suffered that terribly from panic attacks, thank God, but I have had enough to have the deepest sympathy for people who do get them. My mother and sister also have this awful disorder, and the worst thing about it for me is my complete inability to to relate to them. I will go to pieces if a television is on in the house when I'm trying to sleep, but my sister's fear of getting on a crowded subway car infuriates me. It comes with the isolation of the sickness. Things make sense in the vicious, abusive set of rules my brain chemistry insists I live by, but the set my sister's brain imposes upon her seems completely trivial.
I know you.
I know you.
I know you.
