Current Update-Sorry Guys.

Hey guys, to those of you who read this blog I'm sorry.  My anxiety is so out of whack lately I'm not sure if I can blog about it for a while.  I've got a lot of things going on right now, and I'm trying to fight with myself on all of them.  It's hard, and sometimes I think I'm one of the most messed up people in the world, but somehow; beit loving friends and family or some strength I don't know I have...I get through the rough patches.  Today was one, and it'll be awhile before I'm ready to write.  Thank you for being patient. 

Intermission

Hey guys this isn't an official post or anything, but I checked this morning and realized I'm close to 100 views.  Now I know this may not seem like a lot, but to me it means so much.  Thank you to anyone who has been reading this blog.  It just started out as a way to try and release all of the stuff I went through, but now I know that people are reading it and it just makes me feel amazing.  I hope I am helping anyone who is going through this and if you are, please shoot me a message I'd love to hear from you.  Thank you again for anyone who is reading.  
<3

Off of One's Rocker

Getting busy with school starting soon.  Will try and update regularly, but please don't hate if I can't!!!
Some heavy stuff in this chapter.  Please don't take offense!

I had hit rock bottom officially.  My mom had come to me and told me I needed to stop.  She cried.  I had been worrying her so much and I hadn't even noticed, my father too.  While he didnt understand the anxiety, he knew how much it was affecting me, and I hadnt noticed any of this.  How selfish had I been to not see any of this???  Pretty selfish.  I made myself a promise, I was going to change, no matter how long it took. 
First step.  One night home alone consisting of four hours.  I'm not one to say I've had a hard life.  But that night, was one of the hardest nights of my life.  I cleaned the house from top to bottom, did four loads of laundry, all the while singing at the top of my lungs.  I'd begun to learn that silence was one of the worst triggers.  I had saved up a bunch of my money and gone and bought myself a new Ipod and loaded it with tons of music, (mostly Disney!!!) and whenever I could you could find me blasting it until there was ringing in my ears.  Now I'm well aware that that's definitely not good for you, but it was one of the few ways I could cope.  Something about singing, be it good or bad, (I can't carry a tune in a bucket) was a release.  Especially loudly, it made me feel like I was getting some of the tension out of my body.  Every once in a while, I still felt a need to do something, almost bad.  Even to this day, when I have bad awful, crappy days, I imagine myself coming home and throwing plates against a wall.  It's weird I know, but the thought of it was another type of release, I've never actually done it, but thinking about it as oddly empowering.   I made dinner, dessert, and even had time to do homework that wasnt due for at least a week.  It was tiring and terrifying, but I did it.  I did it.  I'd taken the first step, although, I guess if I'm being completely honest, which I'm trying to, it truly wasnt a step.  It was stopping.  I'd stopped running and was confronting it like I needed to.  
Step two.  Dinner with friends.  Another honesty moment, I hadn't left the house to do something social in over three months.  Three months!  Like I'd said before, I was never one for huge social situations, but I'd usually be able to find something to do about every three weeks give or take.  I invited two of  my friends to go to Eat N Park (we're a small town!  That's what we do for fun!!! Don't judge us!!!)  My one friend spent the entire dinner complaining about her younger sister, her father, and things that were happening at church.  I could feel myself getting tense again.  It felt like she was dealing with all these stupid little problems, while I was having a breakdown.  My other friend didnt say anything, but she was playing with a band aid on her finger.  I asked her what happened, becaue she's normally not the type to be clumsy.  She kind of blushed and hem hawed, but eventually said she had been cooking and slipped with a kitchen knife.  I laughed and teased, because I've always been the clumsy one, not her.  My other friend slams her spoon down on the table, nudges me in the ribs and in a fake theatrical whisper goes 'No, she's cutting herself, she can't handle the pressures of high school and hates herself.  Come on admit it!'  My eyes probably got so big they could have rolled onto the table and even Smarty (That's how I'm going to refer to her from now on, because the girl is truly a genius) noticed my reaction.  My stomach dropped and I felt the angriest I'd felt in years. 
How could she joke about something like that?  How could she not know?  Houw could she not see that I was truly having a crisis.  I'd never told her because she's very religious.  I mean VERY religious.  If I'd told her she'd have excorcised me on the spot.  I often asked her how she could have such a strong faith in her religion and she replied because she believed in God.  Don't get me wrong.  So do I.  But sometimes things happen to people that I can't always see him as a merciful being.  Why would have made such wack jobs like me?  Or mass murderers?  One of my biggest concerns with religion lay within my family.  About two years before this my uncle had been diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gherigs disease.  If any of you have seen it, it's a wasting disease that takes a person slowly with no cure.  You simply have to wait for them to die.  My cousin was twelve when he was diagnosed.  He died when she was fourteen.  Fourteen.  Her father was her idol and she loved him more than air itself.  I asked myself after that, why would a merciful being take a girl's father away during the most tumultous time of her life??? (I'm sorry.  I'm ranting and I digress.) 
In those few seconds sitting in an Eat N Park booth, I learned that this was not how a friendship was supposed to be.  I shouldnt have been afraid to tell her because of her reaction.  If she was truly my friend she would have been one of the first people I'd told, and she'd have helped me through it.  That hadn't happened.  So something had to change.  And it looked like it was me. 

Mad as A March Hare

Hello again!  Sorry about the long delay, had a super busy week...Plus, last weeks entry was about a piece of anxiety I have yet to let go of and it threw me out of whack fo a few days.  That's one of the things about anxiety, sometimes, you can be feeling A okay, tip top, and then suddenly it can come back in one felt swoop. 
It was still impossible for me to be alone.  I hated when my parents worked, and they both did often.  I still would go with my mom to work and hang out at the library, but I was doing something I'd always done.  I was ignoring.  I was running from it.  And I wasnt dealing with it, which was what needed to be done.  I honestly didnt have the courage to face it.  I was doing everything in my power to run from it, but I didnt realize I needed to meet it face on, that running was making me exhausted.  I couldnt help it though I was afraid that if I faced it, I would find some terrible thing wrong with me.  I had researched so many mental disorders at that point, i was afraid of even going to a doctor to talk about it.  I asked my mom if she would let me get on medicine, but the therapist was adamant against it.  She told me it was all in my head and I didnt need medicine, I just needed to come to terms with whatever was setting me off. 
At this point, I felt certifiably insane.  You could lock me up in Bedlam and I would agree with you that I needed to be there.  Everything was falling apart, and I couldnt keep my grip on things.  I was lying to my friends, telling them I was fine, nothing was wrong.  My grades were balancing out but they were still the worst I'd ever had, teetering on Cs and I still was only sleeping for about a few hours every night, which was making me irritable and boarish, and I would repeat this day after day after day...
Finally my mom sat me down.  I needed to stop the routine.  I needed to break the shell and get free.  I needed to hang out with my friends again and get out of the house.  This was only the first step though, something I wasn't prepared for. 

ANXIETY

I recently found this on DeviantArt and give credit to toslayadragon. 
The info only says 'I haven't reached Y yet.' 
This is how it feels >.< 

Out Of One's Mind

Because of my insane need to be reliable, I worked harder at my school work, but it felt like I wasnt getting anywhere.  It constantly felt like I was running running running always all the time with no time to breathe.  During one of my math classes, my teacher, normally an awesome guy, showed us a movie called A Beautiful Mind.  If anyone has seen it and loves it, I'm sorry, but this movie, to this day, still.  Scares.  Me.  Don't get me wrong, as the story went on I was totally engaged in it.  If you've never seen it, it tells the story of John Nash, the famous mathmetician who suffered from schizophrenia.  However, my teacher did not tell us about that part of the movie.  And so, if i'm spoiling this for anyone I'm sorry.  When you find out that his best friend, neice, and boss are all figments of his imagination, I literally left the room in tears.  Something about it had touched me so deeply there were no words to describe. 
My religous friend, the on I spoke about earlier became so fascinated in schizophrenia at this point, it became disgusting.  She started reading books about it, researching cases online and jokingly diagnosing people we knew with it.  What she didnt know though was that I thought I had.  I had been researching it a little as well and found out that it usually struck girls in their late teens and it often started with a crippling anxiety.Could I be that crazy that the people I took comfort in were figments of my imagination?  It honestly felt like the piece of my brain that rationalized, was gone.  Whatever scared me, frightened me or put me on edge was automatically real.  The cutting, the suicide, th schizophrenia, there was no way to convince myeslf I didnt have all of these things wrong with me.  I suddenly had an intense fear of the people I loved not being real and to be honest, that was one of the worst ones, worse than the cutting and any other nagging fears I had felt.  This one.  This one was the bane of my existence and even to this day it haunts me.  I will wake up in the middle of the night and for a few seconds feel absolute terror.  Here was something I couldnt deal with.  I had convinced myself the anxiety was from something i was doing, and if I figured it out, I could fix it.  It had yet to occur to me that it might be me.  Just me.  Something wrong with me.  If it was schizophrenia, that was somethin I couldnt fight and that scared me.  I didnt tell the therapist. She did nothing for me.  I'm sure it was my inability to open up to her like you're supposed to, but I couldnt bring myself to do it.  Why should I let this stranger who had never known me until now judge my sanity? 
As this all went around in my head, my friends and I were still growing more and more distant.  I could go an entire lunch hour without speaking to anyone at my table and no one seemed to notice it.  I mean i've always been quiet, and if I'm reading you'd better not disturb me, but something about this felt...wrong.  Shouldnt the people I called my closest friends know that something was seriously wrong??? I began asking myself this question, a lot and getting answers I didnt want.  I was tired of this.  Tired of being ignored...but I didnt think I had the courage to stand up for myself, especially now, when I was feeling so tired and worn out.    

Mad As a Hatter

Hi again!  If anyone has ever experienced anything like this I'd love to hear from you.  Please shoot me a message, I'd like to hear from someone who has dealt with this or is dealing with it now. 

There's a movie with Sandra Bullock, called 28 Days in which her therapist tells a group of addicts this little piece of wisdom “Folks, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  I like this quote because it reminds me of that time in my life.  I would get up, be afraid of myself and my anxiety, do the exact same thing I always did, went to school, came home, struggled with focusing on my homework and then, at one of my lowest points I couldnt be alone in the house.  I would go with my mom to to work, and stay in the library next door until it was time for us to go home.  Her boss was so nice about it after she gently tried to explain what was going on.  I was aware that she had to start telling people about it, to explain my irrational and often erratic behavior, but I was still so embarassed with myself, that I couldnt bring myself to tell anyone besides my mom.  I began getting more and more desperate, and even the therapist began to notice it.  She then began talking to me about suicide.  Why people do it, stuff like that.

I left the therapist's office a pale and shaking wreck that day, only to come home and tell my mom I was scared I was going to commit suicide.  I was terrifed that I had thought about the possibility, but once an idea is in your head, put there by someone else, it's hard to get rid of.  We were supposed to be visiting family members and I was supposed to be down in my room getting ready  Instead, I found myself staring at my reflection in the mirror, wondering how I would 'off myself' as I called it.  I couldnt even bear the thought of thinking suicide in my head so I had to use all these stupid code names.  I am such a wuss, I knew I couldnt do anything that involved severe pain, so that took out a lot of my options.  My mom's family, myself included, suffer from severe migraines, and frequent headaches, so we keep a lot of Tylenol in the house.  I guess I could do that.  My mom called me up from my room and I was dressed and ready, but once again, she knew there was something wrong.  I promised her I would tell her after dinner and she agreed, making me promise to fess up.  I nodded.  

Well we both kept to our word, because I was slowly coming to terms that I felt a lot better once these things were out in the open instead of bottled up inside of me.  I admitted to her that I'd thought about taking an overdose of Tylenol and she simply shook her head at me.  Once again, she knew exactly what to say and her words were, I paraphrase 'Do you known thats the least likely way to kill yourself?  Most times it doesnt work.  You'd probably wake up in a pile of your own vomit.  That'd be attractive.'  She shocked me into laughing until I cried and I felt better.  She always had a way of doing that.  Was I on the verge of better?  Not yet.  It was certainly going to take me a long time to get there.  I just wasnt prepared for how long, or how hard it was going to be.      

More Than A Screw Loose

Wow, I've never been able to keep up with things like this, but I find myself excited about posting on here.  I think getting this all out on paper, or gigabytes I guess, is helping. 

My mom picked me up after the basketball game and could instantly tell something was wrong.  I told her I'd had a mild panic attack, nothing to worry about and that was it.  I didnt tell her why.  And I certainly didnt tell her I'd thought about grabbing a police man's gun.  I worried her enough, I wasnt going to make it worse.  I would deal.  (Our house is old.  Like really old.  When we bought it, it was a tiny two bedroom thing with one bathroom and maybe 900 square feet.  We put an addition on and I decided I was a big girl and wanted a room as far away from parents as possible.  So my room is literally exactly opposite of my parents in the house now)  I was paranoid about being so far away from my parents, my mom was like a relaxant to me.  As long as she was near, I was able to stay relatively calm.  (Silly I know, but old habits die hard)  Which meant, I couldnt sleep in my room.  I had to sleep on the living room couch.  The worst part was I couldnt be alone.  Complete and utter panic would descend upon me if I was ever alone.  This was a new concept, because i'd always been the type to enjoy being quietly alone.  Not in a depressed way, but quiet usually was my sanctuary when I was tired.  Now I needed noise, people, distractions, but too much of it sent me over the edge.  I felt like I was playing a dangerous and somewhat deranged game of balance beam.  If I was alone too long I went crazy.  If I was around too many people I went crazy.  It's kind of hard to control your enviornment when your a high school student who's parents refuse to homeschool you.  So now I was sleeping on the couch; and by sleeping I mean dozing for maybe two hours at a time to wake up to heart shattering panic, only to calm myself down and start it all over again. 

At school, no. one. noticed. Nothing changed.  No one asked if I was alright, and I never said anything.  There were plenty of times that I just wanted to run screaming from the room and not stop until I couldnt breathe anymore.  One friend focused on her studies, one was too into herself to care (I'm going to be speaking alot about this person.  She was very religious and would often criticize me for my 'spiritual and improper' beliefs.  If I offend anyone with my words I am truly sorry.  I know that not all people who put their faith in God are like this, so please don't take it like that)  Besides.  I knew if I told them, they wouldn't get it.  So I stayed quiet.  Stayed reliable, stayed obedient.  But my grades started dipping and I was losing my appetite.  The mere smell of food made me nauseous.  I'd been healthy, if not a little chubby before, and now I was losing weight and not in a good way.  It started slowly, I'd cut out lunch maybe and then all of a sudden I looked in a mirror and realized I'd lost about thirty pounds.  No appetite was another check on that list.  At this point, I was making myself depressed.  I was reading this checklist and worrying so much about fitting the description of a depressed teenager that I actually was and not noticing it. 

It had become such a long term thing at this point I moved into the guest room, which was closer to my parents room.  I would sleep in there, get up in the morning and go to my room to get ready for school.  It became a tedious routine that I couldnt make myself break.  I made my mom swear not to tell any of her friends how far I'd fallen, because I was so embarrassed of myself, I thought people would laugh at me if they knew what was going on in my head.  I started working out, hard core.  It kept the jitteries away and it kept my focus on something other than depression, but I continued losing weight because I wasnt eating to make up for my punishing workouts.

The therapist was useless.  We would sit there for two hours every two weeks and chat.  About school, about anything besides what was really bothering me.  I never told her about the weight loss.  Or the basketball incident, and she didnt ask.  Then I would go home with more of her 'advice' shooting around in my head, more things to worry about, which was exactly what I needed.      

Basketball and Basket Cases

As per before, I want to start this post with saying, if you think this is fake, cruel, crass or insensitive, please don't read on and don't leave nasty comments.  Please. 

I had gotten to the point where my parents were obviously noticing a change.  I had begun wearing a rubber band around my wrist, snapping it back against my skin whenever I thought about the anxiety.  I lied through my teeth to my mother, told her I was fine and just feeling a little overwhelmed.  I promptly left the room because I knew if I stayed, I was going to explode from nerves and tell her everything, why I wasn't sleeping, what I was scared of and what I was thinking about doing.  I went to my room and instantly just burst into tears.  This was too big for me.  I couldn't handle it on my own.  I had been snapping the rubber band so much lately there were red welts on my wrist.  I was aware that this one step up from biting my nails and one step closer to cutting. 
I waited until after my dad had gone to bed, only because I didnt feel like he would understand.  My mom and I have a special bond.  My dad worked alot when I was a kid and we spent several weekends together when I was little.  I knew I could tell her literally anything.  But this, this was something I didnt know how to talk about, because I had never really even let myself think it through.   We sat down and I simply stared at the couch, errantly pulling the rubber band on my wrist.  Finally I blurted it out.  
"Mom I think there's something wrong with me."  Her face changed instantly and I was waiting for her to answer me, but knowing just what to do, she simply sat there and waited for me to explain further.  Know the feeling where you can't get enough air?  Like there is literally someone just pressing on your chest, and your mouth is so dry you can't even imagine talking.  I took a few deep breaths and started to cry again, hard sobs this time and everything came out, whether it was understandable or not.  I waited again for her to write it off, call me crazy, or be severely disappointed.  But she wasn't.  In fact, I'll never forget her reply.  She simply blinked, because seeing me cry had made her tear up and said, "Okay.  What are we going to do about it?"  The fact that she had said we, not me, not you, we, made me feel a fraction better.  First of all, she took the dreaded rubber band and threw it out.  Then we started talking.  Why I was overwhelmed.  Where had I heard about cutting?  Was I scared and that answer was a very resolute 'Hell Yes!'  she nodded again and let me tell her all about how terrified i had been for the past month and she didnt say anything. She didnt have to. 
She let me stay home from school the next day and called my doctor through the emergency line.  After assuring the man on the phone that I was not dying, nor suicidal, he directed her to a therapist I could talk to and we were on our way.  I was actually more scared of telling the therapist than I had been of my mom.  I'm very private.  I was afraid she was going to judge me.  Judge my thoughts and think I was a mentally disturbed teenager.  Instead she gave me a quiz.  A depression quiz she called it and made me rate my answers one to five depending on how strongly or weakly these things applied to me.  I tried to answer as honestly as possible and waited for her to tell me something.  She finished the test and wrote a few more words down on the paper and then turned to me.  The test had given her nothing she said, I was right in the middle, neither depressed nor one hundred percent mentally sound.  Telling that to a terrified teenage girl, who has issues controlling things, wasn't exactly the smartest ideas.  What came next though was worst.  She gave me a list.  A pamphlet more like and it listed all of the signs of teenage depresion.  ALLLLL of the signs.  As in lack of focus, lack of appetite, suicidal thoughts, drawing away from friends.  (I was losing my friends as it were at this time, we were growing apart, one of them too pushy and one of them too focused on her studies to notice what was going on)  She told me to take the pamphlet home and hang it up somewhere.  If I ever found myself slipping into any of these behaviors, I was supposed to call her and leave a message.  (What was a message supposed to do?)  And then made an appointment with my mom two weeks later, saying I wasnt so bad that I would need immediate help and two weeks was the best she could do.   
I think, I was expecting some kind of automatic gratification after speaking to the therapist.  I assumed it would just get better because of the therapist, but for some reason I had to throw the damn pamphlet away. 
The week before, when I was trying to get out of this phase I had signed up to collect charity money at a basketball game that night.  It was for my school's National Honor Society and if you shirk a duty you had previously signed up for without a written cause, you would recieve a demerit.  At this point, it felt like this was the only thing I could control and I was adamant about going.  I was almost ravenous in need to do what people expected because I didn't feel like I was anything special.  My grades were good, but my friend was number one in our class.  I had been a cute kid, but was in the late awkward stage where you start getting curves and boobs and a butt, and I was scandalized with the extra fat my body suddenly had.  Plus, I just couldnt seem to make myself date.  I couldnt see myself with anyone yet, and it made me feel like I was wrong in a way, because I didnt want to be with someone.  So by doing what people expected, it made me, reliable I guess, and I wasn't going to let that go.  So I go.  And I suddenly realize i had made a big mistake.  Like i had said before, my class is small, but with everyone there, it was hot, loud and overbearing.  It was the middle of December and yet I could feel myself sweating under my hoodie. 
There was a police man standing by the door to keep people from pushing and shoving out and in the doors.  A single thing popped into my head and it terrifed me.  I saw myself just going crazy, jumping over the table and grabbing his gun.  I dropped my charity bucket and felt myself go into full out panic mode.  Had I really just???  Wasn't that one of the things on the list???  My friend could see that I had gone stark white, and asked me if I was okay.  I was able to shake my head and then run to the bathroom before puking up my dinner.  After that, I went outside, straight into the December cold without a jacket and just started to cry.  I knew I had to compose myself though, because I was collecting for another hour.  Reliable.  I had to stay reliable.  So I put a smile on my face, wiped my cheeks and walked back into the school. 

If you are reading this, thank you.  I hope it can help you like it is helping me.   

Welcome All

Hey computer screens out there!

Have you heard of the word ANXIETY? In a dictionary it is defined as: A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.  If you've ever suffered from anxiety attacks though, it feels a lot worse than the textbook definition.  Trust me, I know. In 2010, I began suffering from severe, severe anxiety and panic attacks.  This is a type of closure for me; to get it all out there, and hopefully if anyone comes across this and it helps them with their own anxiety issues, than that's awesome!  I'm going to be putting in some of my worst attacks, what brought them on and how I look at them now.  If anyone thinks I am being crass or cruel or insensitive, I'm sorry.  This is how I handle.  Without further ado: The Trials (my friend so aptly named the time period of my life because I'm a huge history dork.  1692?)

I was and still am, a painfully shy person.  I grew up an only child, but with a huge, often loud extended family.  Which meant, if you weren't outgoing, you didn't speak until you were about six or seven when you learned to yell.  I was never a temper tantrum type of child, but with that came a crippling nervousness that hit me whenever I was unsure of myself (Which was a lot!!!).  However, I was able to deal with it and throw it off a lot of the time.  I went to a small school, with a graduating class of just over sixty, the type where you've known everybody since you were about seven.  It's hard to stay a lonely in a class that small so I had a little group of people I hung out with.  

The fall of 2010 was when It started.  It was simple enough.  It was the first time I'd really been stressed, thinking about college, life, grades and the fact that I was still single.  I wasn't sleeping well.  I'd fall asleep and toss and turn, waking up every couple of hours for no reason.  This was manageable.  I started drinking chammomile tea before bed and that helped for awhile.  Then, I began to get shaky.  Just in my hands, and slight enough that I could shake them out and be fine.  It started creeping up though, to where it felt like I had creepy crawlies on my wrists and lower arms.  I continued to try and ward them off by shaking or stretching out my arms over my head.  Along with all of these, there was a type of, nagging feeling in my stomach, where you know something bad might happen, but you don't kow what.  I'd heard about cutting from one of my friends who read, cherished and adored Ellen Hopkins.  I tried reading them at her insistance, but never got very far, they were too dark, depressing and angsty for me.  (I'd promised myself when I was younger that I was not going to be an angsty teenager.  The idea apalled me, and I hated the idea of mopey people.)  However, the disturbing idea of actually harming yourself stuck with me.  I started having nightmares about it, the idea of cutting to make your problems go away.  It was a new concept to me.  I'd never even FATHOMED something like that, ever.  I was a bit of a naive girl even into my teenage years.  I began researching.  Big mistake.  I found out that several things, like chewing nails, picking at scabs and scratching zits (all of which I did) are all forms of self mutilation.  I was terrified of myself.  This was when the worst started.  You know that feeling when you're on a roller coaster and you're at the top of the hill, staring down at the precipise?  That's how I felt.  Like I had already boarded the coaster by biting nails, I had to ride it out and feel the worst. 
The shaking got worse.  I had to shake out my hands all the time, several times.  My knees would twitch, and my feet would tap constantly.  It became impossible to sit still.  I was always moving, always going, always thinking.  If anyone has ever been there, you know the feeling. How weary, tired and just pure exhausted it makes you feel.  I was now only sleeping a few hours at a time, snatched pockets where I wasn't thinking and wasnt worrying.  My parents started noticing a difference.  I was irritable, tired, and prone to crying at the drop of a hat.  My mother, whom I'd always been very, very close with sat me down and asked what was going on.  My first thought was embarrasment.  I was embarrased that I'd thought about cutting myself, because I wanted to be a strong person, stronger than giving in to something like that, and I simply told her I was feeling a little overwhelmed.
Wow, I've already written a lot and this isnt even the worst.  Please, if you read this and think its utter crap, or fake, please don't leave a comment and don't read any further then.  It's my way of coping, by getting all of these memories out of my head and out for someone to read.  If no one reads it, oh well.  If someone does and it helps them. Then that's great and I'm glad I can help.