Typically my anxiety attacks involve more and more frenzied snapchats to like, two or three people. I guess if you want to pretend I'm a decent person and not just an annoying whinypants, you could say this is me trying to reach out for help when I know I need it. Except in reality I'm just an annoying whiny bitch let's be honest.
I have a bad history with panic attacks. They didn't start in full force until after my assault freshman year of undergrad, when they quickly took over my life. I'm no stranger to anxiety attacks either, which come on slower but are just as devastating.
Well the past few weeks I've been really stressed from school and this conference thing, and the bullying of my two roommates has gotten worse. So after in general feeling shitty and exhausted from traveling and being told that I can't be a dancer OR a teacher if I don't like people (another story for another time), I came back to school to almost immediately be told that I'm behind in everything and am basically a failure and don't have my shit together and please tell me something I don't know.
It all culminated on Thursday where it was just too much and I had a bad anxiety attack.
Now here's my dark past of anxiety attacks: pretty much every single time I've had one, whoever has been around has gotten frustrated or angry with me because I can't tell them what's wrong. I will be tense, curled up in a ball, rocking, twitching, crying, whatever, but they'll keep insisting that I have to tell them what's going on and why I'm acting that way.
Okay, yeah, lemme just put this attack on pause so I can explain it to you real quick.
My favorite example is when my real life therapist got mad at me for having a panic attack during a session. He kept saying that if I refused to talk to him I was wasting the money of the people who were paying for the session, that he couldn't do anything if I kept "refusing" to talk.
I stopped seeing him.
But the response to my attacks is saddeningly consistent. Is my inability to communicate really that out of place in a panic attack? Am I really just that fucked up?
The internet tells me to call the suicide hotline but like, I won't be able to talk to them either so that's kind of pointless. People don't have patience for people who can't talk.
I had two emergency pills left and now I have one. Took a while to kick in but then I was just numb and depressed and crazy rather than frantic and depressed and crazy. I mean, i certainly prefer the numb part. Part of me keeps trying to say that it's not much better, but at least it doesn't feel like my insides are tearing out of my body and ripping my skin open in their attempts to get lost. At least I don't care as much about all the things that upset me or hurt me.
Sometimes I'd take a crazy pill to avoid cutting, to escape the desperate panicky feeling that required pain in order to find release. But then the numbness makes it easier to cut, because the initial urge and pain is still there, just not as frantic.
I feel like I have no home because of the way I'm treated when I am home. I feel like I just can't be good enough because sometimes the best I can do is honestly just shitty when it comes to academic work. I feel like a useless human being because I just hate sex and the problems it creates and I wish I could just be normal and like it as much as other people. I feel like I really won't ever feel any better because of my inability to communicate verbally and my inability to believe all the things that I know logically are probably true.
Like, come on. I remember most everything therapists and counselors have told me. I remember all the inspirational things they say. I remember all the activities we did in the psych ward. I remember being surrounded by older men and women who had been living with depression and mental illness for decades.
I remember some who had shock therapy treatment, or whatever the official name is now. I remember what they looked like afterwards, how one of them would swear it helped but just felt awful right after, while the other patient would just shrug and say he really didn't know if it helped or not.
What's the point in having to fight so hard just to exist? Having to be so brave just to exist? When you can't even do anything that contributes to society because of how fucked up you are? When all the "success" stories come from people who are now all like, "but now I have a beautiful husband and a baby boy and I love myself," but for one thing you don't want no baby boy but also what are the chances of finding a husband when you don't like sex (and have irritating panic attacks)?
It's like, there's just no redeeming qualities here. There's nothing that has potential for a success story. I used to daydream about it and being able to tell people that I made it through some really tough times but ultimately found some semblance of success, or stability, or achieved some lifelong goal. I wanted to be able to tell people that I did it, so that they could do it too.
I still think other people can do it, don't get me wrong.
Sometimes I tried to end these posts motivationally because I start to think of all the things I would say to someone who said what I had just said. I know all the answers. I know what all are lies being told to me by my brain and I know that some situations are temporary, yadda yadda yadda. I mean, guys, I was in the psych ward. Hopefully I learned something in there.
But I don't believe any of it, you see.
Maybe if I were just asexual or just chronically mentally ill. But being both is just...impossible. There really are no redeeming qualities or areas of potential there.
Invisible. Wrong. Whiny.
I have one emergency pill left. I have to call the doctor to ask for a refill, which I mean, he'll probably give me cause I got the prescription a super long time ago so it's fairly obvious I'm not like, popping them every day. Buuuut you know, I don't do phone calls or talk to people or anything so the odds of me actually calling to ask are low.
I already took one emergency pill tonight. Once it finally kicked in, it helped. Sort of. I mean, obviously I'm still not in a good state of mind. But I'm not shaking and crying and desperately trying both good and bad coping methods.
But I also want to take another pill just to totally wipe out the chaos and misery in my head right now.
I don't want to be alone, but there's really no one here in Tallahassee I can randomly call. I realize that I don't really have a "support group" here, because I have no real friends. I have friends, but no friends. No friends who would probably like, y'know, be okay with me having panic attacks involving no communication and being a whiny bitch.
Hopefully I'll pass out soon. Unfortunately not before I actually publish this post, though, because heeeey what's the point of being a whiny bitch if no one hears you.
In all serious though, THIS IS WHAT MENTAL ILLNESS CAN BE.
I don't know how this post could help anyone, but maybe if anything it could just give you an idea of what goes on in the mind of someone who lives with mental illness.
That's my futile attempt to make this post a little less self-centered and whiny.
What's the point in doing anything public if it's not going to help someone in some way.
Even if it's an internal chuckle. A brief smile. An idea of what their friends might be dealing with. A scathing commentary on social issues.
I lost track of this post.
I'm on (prescribed) drugs.
Bye.
--Dexter
