What I Want You To Know

You had no idea 22 was going to suck, and my how it sucked. I think you kicked it off with an Indigo Girls concert, as you usually did on your summer birthday. You had a boyfriend and a college degree and plans to spend five weeks in Europe. You were just ready to not be in school anymore, but you were completely unaware of the fact that you'd spend most of 22 with your heart pounding, dreading the onset of darkness, wondering if you'dever be able to just fall asleep again. It was hell. You thought it'd never go away.

But, contrary to everything you believed at the time, you weren't going crazy and you weren't going to die. They didn't have to medicate you to protect you from your own brain and toss you in the psychiatric ward until you gave out at ninety-seven, a doddering drooling old woman. Your boyfriend still loved you. Your family took you seriously. You found someone who said to you, "Maggie, you have an anxiety disorder. It is not going to kill you. We will figure it out. Now stop drinking coffee and breathe a little deeper and come back next week."

Miraculously, things got better the minute you heard those words. One day you realized that you fell asleep on your own the night before. A few weeks later, when you barely remembered what it was like to roam around the house at three in the morning, how daytime was just a slow frightening descent into night, someone asked you, "What would you tell yourself, now that you know all the things that you know?"

This question made your eyes water, just a little bit, because you were (are!) one of those annoying weepy people. You slowly said, "That everything will be okay." You were still 22 years old.

What I want you to know is that that's not all.

So you didn't know anxiety would come back so soon, even though you may have suspected it from time to time. You didn't know what kinds of things trigger it, because the first time was such a sudden mystery. You didn't know that the second time would turn your world upside down, and that of the guy you married three weeks before your 24th birthday. You had no idea that anxiety would make you question everything you thought you wanted for yourself. That's okay. You didn't need to know those things.

Once you had a name for anxiety you set out to research it. You read articles and bought books and learned the difference between SSRIs and benzodiazepines. Knowledge is power, right? You learned that thousands of people suffer from anxiety, even though the published research talks about anxiety that's a little different from the kind you experience. You slowly discovered that none of these thousands of people are anywhere near you, which was sometimes disappointing, because you wished someone else understood what it felt like. Every time the Newsweek or Time cover story is about anxiety and depression, you felt validated in a strange sort of way. You finally acknowledged that your brain is a little bit off, that it doesn't work quite the way it should, but you continued to ignore everyone who told you to just take medication already and that the only thing wrong with you is that your synapses aren't firing right.

That doesn't feel like the whole story. I want you to know that you're right, it's not.

Anxiety is the worst thing that has happened to you so far, by far. I know there are worse things, things over which you would choose anxiety without even blinking, but they haven't happened to you yet. It really is your defective brain chemistry coupled with your unfortunate Type A personality. You believe it and I believe it. There is nothing good about it. I wish it never happened to you. And yet, I want you to know that this miserable awful thing will refine you, purify you, expand your heart in ways you never thought about before anxiety happened. You’ll wonder if it’s possible that God found a way to twist anxiety into something… redeeming? For now, at least, something in your mind will ask you to resist the urge to manage your fear.

You're going to walk past a particularly run down street person and, for the first time, nearly burst with compassion. "There but for the grace of God go I," you'll murmur to yourself, because you, too, will do anything to make the fear go away. You know how easy it could be to keep refilling your wine glass at night, to rely on a nightly Sominex and Yellow Tail cocktail to keep the demons away. Remember how the first doctor you went to for help ripped off a prescription for Klonopin after a five minute consultation, neglecting to tell you what kind of drug Klonopin is? You were so afraid of taking those pills and eventually you threw them away. But now you have some Vicodin left over from getting your wisdom teeth out, and sometimes you'll look at that bottle and wonder if it will help. There but for the grace of God you go.

I want you to know that anxiety will humble you, make you realize you're no smarter or stronger than anyone else, and God, you could use some humbling. You'll stop rolling your eyes at the friend who's been in and out of depression therapy for years, the girls with eating disorders, the people who wash their hands twenty times a day. When the China director still wants to hire you, even after your blunt honesty about what you're going through, you'll be shocked. Why does she want to hire a crazy person? The China director simply understands what you'll slowly begin to understand: no one is perfect, no one has his act completely together.

You never felt closer to God than the day you gave up trying to figure out what the hell was going on, sitting alone on a breaker rock facing Lake Geneva and wondering if you would ever feel normal again. The lake filled your entire peripheral vision and you floated away, envisioning life where this was all there was to see, forever and ever. You'll think back to this time, thankful that things aren't that bad anymore, hopeful for the future. I want you to know that you're still dealing with anxiety. You didn't find a way to end it. It occurs to you that you could become one of those weird Catholics who are always offering up their suffering, as anxiety, for whatever reason, has given you the clearest understanding you've ever had of what offering your suffering means. Somehow you know this makes you a better person. One night when it's dark and it's time to go to bed and your heart is racing, you'll pray through it and you'll start the next day wondering if you finally know what he meant when he said "I will give you the strength to endure it."

It's something I want you to know, wish I could tell you, maybe something that could console you when things are bad. But maybe forget that last one, it's complicated, you'll have plenty of time to bend your mind around it later.  All of this, I think, is kind of a lot to swallow when you’re considering the second glass of wine and nervously watching the alarm clock. I can't help wondering what other things I'll want to say to myself five years from now. I guess my first thought remains the most true: everything will be okay.

This is my entry into the 'What I Want You To Know' blog carnival hosted by the gorgeous and fabulous Baggage.

 

Comments

[Angela]

Damn... I forgot about the carnival.

"You'll stop rolling your eyes at the friend who's been in and out of depression therapy for years, the girls with eating disorders, the people who wash their hands twenty times a day."

Being a weepy type person also, that line really got to me. I always, ALWAYS rolled my eyes at the "depressives"... chin up, and all that, you know what I mean. You really don't know until you're on the other side, and then you know how other people can judge, because you were that person once.

Beautifully written.

[Christina/Mrs Broccoli Guy]

Beautiful, touching, and real. You help me relate to something I have never experienced myself, to feel a little of what you felt.

[Jenny Ryan]

Wow. I am speechless. Thank you.

[Alicia]

Thank you.

I'm 16. I've had anxiety issues since I was 5, and I know exactly how you feel. My least favorite part of the day is twilight, I feel like I haven't done enough in my day and then the thought of trying to sleep is the most terrifying thing, because what if I can't sleep, what if I feel sick in the middle of the night, the what ifs are awful. (Plus, it makes my writing skills now go FAR AWAY, and they laugh at my run on sentences.) My anxiety manifests itself in the crying, the gagging (it is SO NICE that throwing up is one of my hugest fears. Not.), the worrying so much I don't have the time to do what I was worried about, the inability to leave my house sometimes.

I actually live an hour away from Seattle, I grew up in that great city. So I just wanted you to know, I live near and I hope you are slowly getting out of this anxiety hole, and that you are definitely not alone.