A journey with Anxiety and Depression

A journey with Anxiety and Depression

I once read that anxiety is disturbed water because someone won’t stop throwing pebbles. These words resonate with me on a deep level that perhaps can not be understood by those whom have never personally experienced anxiety or depression. But here’s an image.

Anxiety is drinking acid to stop the quivering, it is a discomfort you feel when you think and feel too much to the point where you can’t function. You’ll read plenty of times that anxiety is feeling too much and feeling nothing at all, all at the same time. This statement is the most accurate representation of anxiety that I’ve read thus far. Anxiety is not just nervousness, it is a demon that eats away at your soul and your ability to function in environments. It disintegrates your emotional state in any environment. It is the feeling you get when you’re surrounded by people and yet you still feel alone.

Anxiety is debilitating, and yet we’re expected to attend school and work because somehow temporary work is more important than our mental states. We cannot handle noise and people and work and sports and activities and responsibilities and anxiety all at the same time. It is impossible. We cannot handle anything, despite how hard we try because our minds are filled with spilt paint and black stained ink that fogs our rational mindsets. Anxiety is the chaos and manic of the mind and the inability to focus because there are too many storms happening internally. Now imagine having anxiety and depression at the same time.

Depression is the silence of the mind. The nothingness. The absence of thought, the emptiness of the heart and soul and the feeling of nothing at all. Imagine having them both. Imagine having to attend school with an empty heart and soul, and a conflicted mind. Imagine being so detached from reality that the world felt like it was collapsing in on you and the ground below you was sinking sand. That was my story. I was sinking slowly and yet the harder I fought, the faster I sunk.

Somehow these two words have defined my entire life and I never even realized it. Perhaps it was because I never knew I was depressed or anxious until I started taking my anti depressants. I just assumed that my inability to function like the people around me was what came with my mind and soul. I had no idea that not everyone felt the gravitational pull of nothingness. Perhaps that is why so many people revert to things like suicide and self harm, It is not for attention. It is merely for them to find a way to cope with the distorted world that they’re sucked into and have no understanding of. I had no way of knowing that wanting to sleep and cry all day, ignoring friends for weeks on end, having meltdowns because the bed sheet wasn’t evenly spread on both sides, even my unpleasant mood swings weren’t just a part of my bad habits, it was a part of the dark staticky corners of my mind that had been neglected. It was a part of depression and anxiety – which I apparently had a raging case of. It’s a funny thing that. No one knows that you’re slowly slipping into oblivion until you’re diagnosed, until you’re self harming, until you’re suffering at obvious levels that it becomes concerning.

however, once you’ve been diagnosed, you get put on to anti depressants. Drugs. Prescribed toxins that arguably cause more harm than the most dangerous drugs in the world. Don’t get me wrong, they work for people, but they’re addictive and they’re harmful. Though, I do know hundreds of people that are on them and they’re doing just fine, right? So once I got put on the medication, I had to go back to my every day life, attempt to cope with school after missing a few months, sit at dinner with my mom and try to persuade her into believing that I was back to normal because I was the normal one who never gave her any troubles. Somewhere along the line, I lost my morals, I lost my self esteem and I lost myself. I was constantly told that I was different, and honestly, I felt different. I felt like a lifeless body of mass that was sinking into the nothingness that had successfully suffocated my being. I was doing just fine, wasn’t I? Yet the more drugs I took, the more depressed I became. The more lifeless I became. The more detached I became. This started to grow into a greater issue than I originally was in. My initial teenage years were torn away from me and they were spent in clinics, doctors rooms, court rooms, beds and therapist rooms. Instead of going to class, I was hallucinating. Instead of studying notes, I was trying to remember the day of the month. Instead of spending time with friends, I was spending time with doctors prescribing more pills that I had to shove down my throat. I soon realized that there was an issue far greater than pills and doctors could solve. My internal conflict had to be addressed by myself. In this realization, I decided against all odds and I cut off all of my medication overnight. I suffered brain shocks, hallucinations, crippling depression and debilitating anxiety. But through everything, I somehow knew that this was something that I needed for myself. I’ve never looked back from that moment. There were moments where I’d hate it all and I wanted to go back to the misery, but I found it in me to realize that that moment was a deciding factor in my life. I set out to do more than anyone believed I could. And that’s the thing about depression and anxiety, they deceive your mind and soul and convince you that you aren’t alright, and the only way you can combat the internal destruction is to pull yourself out of it. The truth is, your broken and damaged hands are the only hands that’ll be there through the entire struggle to be able to pull you out of it.

One thing I’ve learnt through my experiences is that although depression and anxiety may not be physically visible illnesses, they most certainly are there. They’re there for everyone, some more than others, but they capture those who least expect it. Depression and anxiety are two topics that are vaguely discussed and often ignored. This disadvantages the vast population because they will not be capable of identifying these two illnesses before they envelop a persons being. These two topics need to be tackled in new ways, not merely by prescribing harmful and addictive medication. Not by trial and error, but through discussions and support.

A persons entire life can change for the worst if they do not have a hand to catch while they sink. Be that hand and you could save a persons life, despite how extreme it may seem.