I’m an anxious person. I fear every slightly different tone of voice, I fear if others perceive me as weird and I fear not having self awareness in social settings.
My anxiety also strains from my fear of failing. It consists of little things like: failing to be a good sister to my brother, fear of not being a good enough friend, fear of failing my classes, fear that I was never meant for the journalism profession or fear of getting fired from my long-term job that supports my financial independence. I have a lot to rely on myself for and I leave no room for failure because if I fail I don’t know how, or if, I can recover from it.
I’ve had my obstacles, and I’ve recovered in short-term ways. One of my most problematic coping mechanisms was avoidance. I got used to avoiding my problems for a really, really long time because I feared the radio stations.
Two years ago, I had the worst panic attack of my life. It was mid-January on a Wednesday. I woke up that morning in a sweat. But with a headache and heavy chest, I got ready for work. At my desk, I didn’t have the energy to do my job, my fingers felt weak and uncontrolled, so I played the hit songs of that month, one of them being “Messy” by Lola Young.
Young wrote the emotional hit song “Messy” to describe how she felt about not being good enough for a partner or family member. She struggled to please others by contorting her personality to fit their “clean girl” standards. The song hit close to home when I compared it to my relationship with my mom and my ex-boyfriend, both of whom made me feel insecure because I did not fit their standard.
So, when the panic attack finally hit me on the drive home, I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know that my shaky, sweaty hands, chattering teeth and loss of breath meant I was suffering internally because I didn’t know how to express my emotions externally.
The rest of the night became a blur. All I knew was I was at my moms house after not speaking for a very long time, but I left feeling worse because after expressing how she hurt me, she would victimize herself by calling out my actions I did out of hurt, when I was a teenager. Through the beginning stages of the panic attack, I still tried to reconcile with a narcissist.
After realizing the talk wouldn’t go anywhere I went home, where my panic attack got worse and I asked my mom to take me to the ER for chest pains at 11 p.m.
I stayed in the ER until 7 a.m. the next day. The whole night, I felt like something was ripping in my chest, I could hear my heart beating in my ears, I sobbed so much that the sleeves of my sweater were soaked in tears and snot, my teeth felt like they were going to shatter from grinding against each other, the tiny gaps of air my body allowed me to inhale were my only form of concentration. My fingers tug at the roots of my hair and if they weren’t in my hair, they were covering my mouth because my mom would threatened to leave me if I did not “shut the fuck up and stop crying.” My body temperature felt like I was stuck in the rain, naked, and my only form of warmth were the goosebumps that covered my entire body.
But the worst part was not my body begging to be heard, it was my mind struggling to listen to one voice, mine.
I can only describe my mind as if there were three radio stations playing at the same time on full volume. One of the stations played the infamous song “Messy,” the second was a voice reminding me how I will never be good enough for my mom, my ex-boyfriend, or my dreams. And the last station was me, my voice, and it was the lowest volume out of all of them. I recall begging myself to calm down, to breathe, and try to focus on the present and where I was physically. Sometimes, my voice would help snap me back into reality, but it didn’t last more than 20 minutes until I was pulling at my hair again.
I survived the night.
Exhausted and sleep deprived, I slept for 18 hours the next day.
Afterwards, I signed up for therapy where I learned grounding and breathing techniques, and added yoga to my everyday lifestyle. It helped, I didn’t feel a panic attack for a while, only when it came to others, but not when it came to myself, until recently.
If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t written a blog post in a long time, so forgive me if I’m rusty. I’ve been busy! I graduated from community college, I moved four times this summer, I worked my first internship and I still work that full-time job. Because of this, I’ve barely had enough time for myself. So that feeling of weak fingers, chattering teeth and chilling goosebumps have begun to make its way back into my life.
Anxiety is like a disease that stays dormant in your body until you allow it to take over. During these attacks, I don’t feel in control of myself and that’s frightening. To feel stuck inside your head while your body makes its own decisions for you because you mentally can’t get it together. It’s almost like watching yourself in third person but from the discomfort of your mind.
Mental health, self discovery, self love is the worst rollercoaster ever made. You may feel good one day, and the next your back to feeling like shit. It’s weird, but one thing I’ve learned as a girl in my 20s, is that you’re never reverting back to square one, you’re just back to where you left off which is more progress than you realize.
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