Tag: panic attack

Worth.

Worth.

by themusingsofatwentytwoyearold ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

“If you can’t love me at my worst, you don’t deserve to love me at my best.”

This phrase has been floating around in my head the past two weeks. I’m finally doing okay. My therapist, nutritionist, and psychiatrist have all remarked about how I seem lighter. There’s a bounce in my step. And being okay has given me the chance to really reflect on my relationship with my ex-best friend. Without the rose colored glasses this time.

She made me think that I needed her to survive, and then left me without a warning. All of when I was in an extremely vulnerable place.

I’ve come to realize that she took advantage of my vulnerability. She likes to feel needed, and I needed her. Until she decided I wasn’t worth it anymore.

Honestly though I’m grateful that all of this happened. I’m definitely stronger now because of it. And, more importantly, I know what I’m worth. Yes, when I hit rock bottom I sucked as a human and hurt her. I’m not trying to shrink responsibility for that. But also, I was at my absolute lowest. My brain couldn’t take anymore, and I was out of coping mechanisms. And ultimately the reason I ended up hurting her was because she fostered this unhealthy attachment- this need for her for survival. And when I was at my absolute lowest, instead of checking in on her supposed best friend, who was clearly not okay, she ran.

I’m worth more than that.

I’m normally a kind, funny, generous human being who goes out of her way to help people. Who is a good listener. Who stresses way too much over grades. Who cries when she sees roadkill on the side of the road. Who is addicted to Starbucks. Who is goofy and loves a dance party to Taylor Swift songs. Who buys candles just for their packaging- but never lights them. Who wants to be a teacher purely so she can make a positive impact on her future students’ lives. Who plans on keeping extra food and clothes in her classroom, so her students are always fed and dressed in clean clothes.

And she ignored all of that. All of the positives. All of the, hopefully, endearing weird quirks. Choosing only to see the one moment where I was trapped like a caged animal inside my own brain.

This took me a long time to forgive myself enough to be able to say it, but now I cannot say it enough- I am not me when I am wrapped up in an anxiety attack or panic attack. That does not define me as a person.

And I’m definitely not trying to say I’m perfect or a saint. I know I’m no where near that. But I guess what I am trying to say, is that a true friend will stick with you through the highs and lows. Because they know who you really are. And she didn’t.

She still thinks that we’re friends, but I’m not so sure that I have a place for her in my life anymore. I don’t know if the true her is the her who held me while I cried after I told my parents about my eating disorder, or if the true her is the person who didn’t give a *#$! that I was in pain for two months. The person who kept lying to me.

All I know is that I’m worth more than what she made me out to be. I’m not some broken thing that she needs to fix. I never was.

-X

Rise.

Rise.

by themusingsofatwentytwoyearold ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In the past, I had been convinced I had hit rock bottom. Wow, was I wrong. Rock bottom doesn’t look like being so consumed by Ed that hospitalization, and in-patient treatment. No, rock bottom looks like the past 48 hours.

Rock bottom looks like loosing your relationship with your best friend. Wanting so desperately to just sit down and have a conversation. Your best friend throwing what can only be described as a revenge dinner. Just to hurt you, or at least that’s how it feels. Screaming until you’re numb. Crying because you can’t feel anything. Crumbling because you’ve never felt so alone. Restricting in an attempt to prove that you don’t need anyone or anything. Cutting in a last ditch effort to make the worst panic attack you’ve ever had stop. Throwing out all, and I do mean all, of your food. Running out of the apartment with no shoes and no direction. Roommates calling the cops because they think you’re a danger to yourself. Your parents showing up at 1am, because your roommates called them too, you making your parents turn around at 3am and leave. Your best friend, who told you that she loved you unconditionally, discovering that she does actually have conditions for loving you, and leaving you to suffer the absolute worst day of your life alone.

But I’m still here, and thanking God that I had a nutritional therapy appointment already scheduled for today.

My nutritionist helped me realize that this wasn’t my fault. Ed was completely in control here. My friends called the cops because they were panicking too. They felt like they didn’t have the tools to cope with the situation.

It wasn’t my fault.

I know that I need to take responsibility for my actions and words, but that doesn’t mean that I have to beat myself up for it. I can use all of this hurt and pain as a stepping stone. But first, I need to take care of myself. I need to get back on track with my meal plan. I need to reach out to my roommates and thank them for caring and apologize for how I treated them for it. I need to stop trying to force a solution with my best friend. I need to remind myself that everything happens for a reason.

The only thing left to do now is rise. The only way to go now is up.

-X

Lonely.

Lonely.

by themusingsofatwentytwoyearold ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I keep waiting for a text. Every two minutes I’m checking my phone. I’m playing games with myself- if I leave my phone alone for ten minutes, when I get back there will be a text. There never is.

My best friend and I got into a fight last night. I cried until 6am. Skipped my first class. Only went to my second class because I had an exam. Came home and cried some more. I think I’ve really ruined things this time.

The fight started over a change of plans. How stupid is that? She decided she was staying home longer for spring break, and then altered our dinner plans for that night. And instead of reacting to it like a normal person, my brain completely took over. I lost all control of my emotions. Accused her of abandoning me. Said really awful things that I feel really guilty about and don’t ever want to repeat. Had a panic attack for at least three hours straight. Had to stop myself from doing stupid things because I was in pain. Lost the recovery dinner battle. Skipped dinner. Tried to clean everything out of the fridge. Only didn’t throw away the entire fridge because my normally completely self-involved roommate noticed and dragged me away from it- crying.

I think I’ve really ruined things this time.

I hate who my anxiety turns me into. I hate that it makes me a monster.

I hate going to bed angry and feeling like things are broken. It makes me feel like they’ll never be fixed. The panicky, abandoned, unloved feeling never goes away. I cry so hard that I can’t calm down enough to fall asleep. Do you know how awful that is? To be so deeply devastated that you can’t even escape it through sleep? Maybe you do. If you do, I’m so sorry. It’s the worst feeling in the world.

And now I’m sitting here. Waiting for a text that tells me that she still loves me. But I don’t think that I’ll get it this time. Everyone has a breaking point.

-X

Backstory.

Backstory.

by themusingsofatwentytwoyearold ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I might have mentioned this before, but in my free time, I work in a planetarium. I’m still relatively new at giving Star Talks though (which are basically 40 minute astronomy lectures), and after my sixth ever show, a man came up to me. And he introduces himself by saying, “Great show, but I noticed two things. One, you said that the sun was 4.6 million years old instead of billion. Two, you said Galileo was Roman not Italian. At the beginning of the show you said you were an elementary education major, and if you’re going to be educating kids you don’t want to be educating them with misinformation.”

Now, his comments weren’t incorrect- I did have two slip ups. But his comments threw both my current job, and career aspirations into question- my anxiety sent my head spinning. I felt unqualified for literally everything. How could I be a teacher when I didn’t even know basic facts? And clearly I wasn’t qualified to be working at my current job.

Thankfully, this was my last show of the day, because I had a panic attack as soon as I got to my car. Quite honestly, with this one comment, I went from having an okay anxiety day (because if we’re being honest, I haven’t had a good anxiety day in forever) to collapsing and feeling panicked and anxious for the remainder of the day.

And this whole scenario just made me think about how incredibly careful you have to be with your words. This man had no idea his thirty second comment would send me into a panicked state of mind for the rest of the night. But it did.

You never know someone’s backstory. Maybe they just broke up with someone. Maybe they’re struggling with a severe illness- either mental or physical. Maybe they just lost someone close to them. Maybe they’re just point blank having a bad day. Or a bad couple of minutes. My point is, you have to be mindful of your words and actions. You never know what someone else is going through.

I have a sticker on my laptop that says “be kind anyway.” This is a motto which I find incredibly important, and do my absolute best to live by. No matter how someone is treating you, you should always do your very best to be kind anyway. Because you never know what that person is going through, or how they’re hurting. And honestly, hurt people hurt people. I think that there is hardly ever a case in which it is justifiable to be mean to someone. And I say hardly ever because there definitely are a few extreme exceptions. But for the most part, I believe that we, as humans, should do our absolute best to put out kindness into this world.

I apologize if this has come across as a little bit preachy. That was not my intention.

This whole experience has just really made me reflect on myself and my actions- I hope that I never unintentionally caused someone to have a bad day, or said something which was triggering. So I’m just going to continue doing my best to live by the words “be kind anyway,” and take a little extra care to be mindful of how my words and actions could unintentionally affect others. Because I know how badly that man at the planetarium’s comments resonated with me, and cut me, and I’m sure that that was not his intention. But yet here I am, still remembering every word of his comment three days later.

-X

Anxious.

Anxious.

by themusingsofatwentytwoyearold ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Lately, I feel like my anxiety has taken over my life. There are always a million different “what could go wrong” scenarios going through my head. I don’t like going down hills because, “What if I fall?” I hate speaking up in class because, “What if I’m wrong? What if everyone laughs?” I don’t like trying new things because, “What if I’m not good at it?” I avoid social situations because, “What if they don’t want me there?”

I avoided hanging out with my roommates last night because I didn’t know where to sit. So instead of pulling over a chair, like most people would, I just walked through the living room to my room. And then had to sit in my room – alone. Listening to everyone else have a good time. Because something as simple as pulling over a chair made me too anxious.

Feeling isolated and alone has become a common feeling lately.

I hate who I turn into when I’m anxious. I become this person who is so insecure that she has to ask the same question twenty times- just to make sure that the answer hasn’t changed in the past two seconds. I become so needy and dependent. I become this person who constantly feels ignored, unloved, and abandoned – no matter what the scenario. I become this person who shoves the people that she loves away from her. As hard as she can. And I hate it. And I’m sick of it. Because it’s not who I am.

When I’m not feeling anxious, I’m a kind and understanding person. Or at the very least, I try my very best to be. But when I’m feeling anxious, I can’t understand that the reason that you’re texting while you’re sitting next to me is because you’re just trying to have a casual conversation with someone else. My brain always runs away with the worst case scenario. It goes from she’s texting because she would rather be anywhere else, to she’s texting because she would rather be with anyone else. But it’s not done there. It then snowballs into, she’s texting because she doesn’t care about me. And from there to, she’s texting about how much she hates me. It’s normally at about this point that the panic attack starts.

And the worst part is, is that I know that all of it is irrational. Yet, I am unable to stop. I’m trapped by my own brain.

Last night, I was so trapped by anxiety that I felt like everything was hopeless. That nothing good would ever happen to me. That my anxiety would destroy all of my relationships. That the future was only filled with more anxiety and panic attacks, and that there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

I’m not going to say that this feeling has completely gone away. That would be a lie. Especially, because I’ve recognized that I need anti-anxiety medication- something which my parents are very against. And unfortunately, they get the final say because I’m still on their health insurance. But I will say that now, post panic attack, there’s a glimmer of hope. If I don’t give up, keep going to therapy, and keep writing, things might eventually be okay.

-X

Breathe.

Breathe.

by themusingsofatwentytwoyearold ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I wear a set of bracelets, with words inscribed on them, on my wrist every day. The only time I ever take them off is to shower. They serve as little reminders of things to be more of. For example, one of my bracelets says “be kind.” I use this bracelet to help me remember to see things from other points of view, and to always be kind to people. This is because I’ve found that you never really know the true story behind someone’s actions, and so a little kindness can go a long way.

I also rank my bracelets daily- by importance. With the bracelet that I feel like I need the most that day being closest to my hand. The one which is almost always ranked at the top is the word “breathe.”

The word “breathe” has come to mean a lot to me over the past year. My life has kind of fallen apart. I went from just disordered eating, to a full blown eating disorder. My anxiety went through the roof. I went from occasionally having a panic attack, to, on a bad day, having at least five panic attacks. I isolated myself from a majority of my friends; I would rarely attend social events. To top it all off, I fell in love with my best friend- only to be rejected. Basically, my life was a mess.

However, throughout the disaster of 2018, this bracelet reminded me to keep breathing. To keep breathing through my panic attacks. When it felt like the walls were closing in and I was being suffocated. When it felt like the world was moving too fast- no matter what I did to try to stop it. When I was panicking so intensely that I was paralyzed- frozen in place. All I had to do was look down at my wrist, and I was reminded that there was hope that it would all be okay. If not now- eventually. As long as I breathed.

Now, I’ve learned different breathing techniques to help me through a panic attack. I use a breathing app on my Apple Watch to help me regulate my breathing when I’m panicking. However, I don’t always like using it because I feel like it’s something that is noticeable- I can’t just do it subtly. So I’ve also learned other breathing techniques like 4-7-8 breathing. Where you breathe in for four counts, hold for seven, and then release for eight. 4-7-8 breathing has become my go to breathing technique when I’m panicking in a social situation, and I feel like it’s too noticeable to run my breathing app.

However, the word “breathe” still stays at the top of my stack of bracelets. As a reminder. To keep breathing. Because it’ll all be okay at the end, and if it’s not okay- it’s not the end.

-X