My Life

Content warning for depression, anxiety, discussion of self-harm

 Have you ever tried doing stuff when you just can't do anything? I honestly thought that it was semi-normal for years to go through life with periods where you just can't do anything and the thought of doing anything - even something that you were excited for and ready for and you just didn't go. There were times in my life where I would be laying down waiting to go somewhere - a bible study group or a friends hangout and I would watch the clock tick down to the time I needed to leave by and I just never moved. It felt like I didn't have the mental or emotional strength to get up and go through with my plans. And I thought that it was kind of normal for people to feel and maybe it is, but other people just know how to deal with it better. 

There were weeks at a time where I would just stop my entire social life without even thinking about it - it would just happen and one day I would look back and notice that I hadn't done anything or even tried to do anything for weeks. People would ask me where I had been and I wouldn't know what to tell them' How do you tell someone that you just didn't move? That physically I could force myself through my classes at school but afterwards I would just lay down and feel like I couldn't move? Looking back, I know that those times that I would essentially disappear (it felt like) for weeks definitely affected my life and my relationships, both with my close friends and with people that I did not know very well. 

Going into these (what I would call) depressive episodes made me miss out on a lot of stuff with my friends. We had a weekly bible study group that I would only make sometimes because of those episodes. There was chances for me to expand my circle of friends with other people and groups that I could have invested in, but I didn't know how they would react to these swings of mine and I didn't know how I would explain it to them, so I just never tried to do much of anything else. 

Sometimes these depressive-like episodes were also accompanied by a type of anxiety period where everything that happened to me was put under a hyper microscope by me and my mind would spin into the most terrible things I could think of. It wouldn't matter if they were my closest friends since childhood, my co-worker or boss or a random person that I saw in the street. If I thought or knew that something they said/did was related to me - I wouldn't think of the nice things or anything like that - I would immediately 'know' that those people hated me; that they didn't want to be my friend; that I was going to get fired; that they found me digusting after a 30-second conversation. Sometimes these times would lead to some self-stimming or self-harming behaviors that presented both mentally/emotionally and physically. 

These depressive episodes and anxiety periods fed into a never-ending cycle for times in my life way before I ever considering seeing someone to get diagnosed. But the cycles came in waves, so I would deal with it for a while and then it would lessen for a little bit, sometimes both the depression and anxiety would lessen, sometimes just one or the other. 

Finally, when I was in college I decided that I needed to talk to someone and I first went to my college mental health department which took me three weeks to get in and after an hour talking to someone; they told me that I could see a therapist at the school in approximately two months. That didn't work for me, so I went to a practice outside of the school. Looking back, I don't know if the person I picked for my first therapist was the best person for me, but at the time they were the only practice that responded to me and I didn't and still don't know how to say no to people politely and to their face - I would rather just ghost them. 

So when I was finally able to talk with someone who could diagnose me - the first one diagnosed with with Generalized Anxiety Disorder with obsessive tendencies and Depression which I did fixate on the obsessive tendencies part a little too hard. The second one diagnosed me with an Adjustment Disorder with mixed anxiety and depressive moods - so still not sure what my official diagnosis is, but it's one or both of those things. 

I definitely did not set out to write this tonight, but it is something that has been in my life for as long as I can remember. I can't remember when I realized that going through this and feeling like this wasn't supposed to be normal but it is what it is and it is my normal of a type. 

Wow - I sat down and opened my computer to check my email and a few other things and nine paragraphs later this is done. So please anyone who is going through something similar - know that you are not alone and that you can make it. It took a long time before I felt ready or I guess low enough to reach out to someone, but I could do it and you can too.