Normal
I am going to talk about this.
I am going to document this.
I’ve been suffering from depression and social anxiety for as long as I can remember. I didn’t realize something was truly wrong until my hair started to fall out when I was ten and I started questioning why I was here. I remember laying on the floor as a kid and crying because I felt so hopeless and worthless. I was never brave enough to tell people about what I was feeling and the fact that I was losing hair. One day in July my hairstylist found the bald patch on the back of my head. That was the beginning of a year long journey of going to doctors offices, using weird medical equipment, taking blood tests and long car rides to random doctors. Not once did I tell anyone that I wasn’t happy and that I was nervous all the time. In the end there wasn’t a concrete answer as to why my hair was falling out and it was miserable. I couldn’t believe how blind people were. I didn’t understand how people did not see how much I was suffering. I remember going home after the last doctor’s appointment in disappointment and almost tears. How could no one see what was wrong? When I got home I vowed to myself that I would be better when I got older. I told myself that I would be braver and ask for help. When I was ten I had hope in the older me, I thought that the older me would become more brave, stronger, wiser and be able to ask for the help that my ten year old self needed. Years passed though and I found myself getting worse and worse. There was always the excuse of, “I can do it later.” It’s a pathetic excuse but it is one that I used for years. I felt so much shame for not being like everyone else. There is a question that we get asked almost every single day by someone,
“How are you?”
It could be a friend, a employee who is obligated to ask etc. We even ask people this question on a regular basis.
Have you ever noticed that the answer is always the same?
“I’m fine.”
Or…
“I’m good, how are you?”
Sometimes we add the last part so we don’t have to keep talking about ourselves.
Most of the time we lie because we feel obligated to be okay. We can’t always be okay though, we’re taught to push down our actual feelings and pretend we have other ones. It’s this toxic cycle we keep going through in a attempt to be ‘normal’. As a ten year old I knew to lie about what I was feeling and learned to push it down inside. I knew that I wasn’t okay and I didn’t understand why it wasn’t okay to not be okay. I fell into that toxic, annoying, tedious cycle, just like everyone else for years.
In my writing class the first assignment that we had was to write a letter to our younger selves. To me, it was a daunting task because I knew I had to face that ten-year-old who had faith in that almost twenty-year-old. Also, I didn’t want anyone to read something that personal, at the same time I didn’t want to lie. Before doing the actual assignment, I sat on the floor with my typewriter and started writing a blunt letter to ten-year-old me. I basically apologized to my ten-year-old self. I apologized because I felt like I had failed and disappointed that scared ten-year-old. My ten-year-old self had so much hope in almost twenty-year-old me, I thought that I would be better, wiser and most importantly healed. It was when I sat on my bedroom floor to write that letter that I realized how little I had done and how bad things had gotten. When I finished writing the letter I felt terrible, I started to panic. What am I going to do? How am I going to get through life like this? How can I almost be twenty and not be able to talk to a stranger without freaking out? How am I going to get a job? Who is going to want to marry me? How am I going to be able to take care of a kid?
In the midst of this my family was trying to get me a job, soon enough my whole family was involved. My mind immediately went back to my first job, siting on the floor of a dirty bathroom, having a panic attack. I didn’t know how I was going to keep a job when I couldn’t even get to class. Eventually, my mom and aunt found a job and suddenly I was guaranteed a job that was very social. I didn’t know how to say that I couldn’t do it, it seemed as if no one would ever understand. I went through the whole process of filling out the application, meeting the boss and then I started to panic again. How am I going to do this? What if I’m not good enough for this? Then I proceeded to think about how everything would go wrong. I was sitting in the parking lot of the library, crying because I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t think that I would able to drive home.
“This isn’t living,” I realize. “This is barely breathing.”
I did end up getting home and I looked on the calendar to realize that I was seeing my doctor in two weeks. I could survive for two weeks. All the while I was getting phone calls from a person who was practically giving me a job. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up that phone. What was I going to say? What would I tell my parents? What would people think? My brain never stops working or thinking. Calls and texts began to pile on top of each other and once again I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. At this point the appointment was five days away, I could survive five days. I had no idea what that appointment was going to bring, I didn’t even know what I was going to say. That appointment came though and I was beyond nervous. I was going back and forth from thinking that I was going to say something and then I wasn’t. I went back to the small room and I waited for my doctor. I would have loved to have seen what I looked like because I felt miserable and nervous. Eventually, my doctor came in, we went over my bloodwork, made sure that everything was okay physically and then my appointment was coming to a close.
“Are you really not going to say anything?” I ask myself. “Are you just going to keep suffering and hope you say something the next time?”
It felt like my depression and anxiety were beating my mind and I had no idea what to do.
He finishes the paperwork, looks and me and asks, “Is there anything that’s bothering you?”
Time stops and I begin to speak.
I don’t exactly remember what I said because it came out like a flood of random words and sentences. I can put it in one sentence though,
“I need help.”
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I have the best doctor in the world.
He didn’t look at me like I was insane, he looked at me in complete understanding and sympathy.
“This is what we’re going to do,” he starts. “I’m going to give you a list of therapists that you can go to, the first week of August I want you to call me and tell me how you’re doing.”
He then proceeded to talk to me about taking anxiety medication and antidepressants the beginning of August, if I wanted. I was struggling to not cry and keep my jaw from dropping.
“This is happening,” I tell myself. “Things are going to get better.”
“You weren’t nervous about telling me this, right? You weren’t losing sleep over this?”
Only ten years and two weeks.
“No, I was fine.”
He finishes up more paperwork, documenting the anxiety and depression and I was unbelievably happy.
“That was incredibly brave,” he says earnestly.
I left that doctors office a more hopeful person. When I got to my car, I began to cry. I thought that I was going to have to jump through hoops to get them to believe me. I thought that it was going to take me forever to be able to get medication, to find a therapist etc. For the first time in a long time I felt safe and secure, I was going to be okay.
I completely forgot about the missed calls that were on my phone. All I could focus on was the joy that was inside of me.
The next day was completely different. I was working out when angry texts from members of my family and I realized what had happened. I had screwed up, bad. I had lost the job opportunity because I couldn’t answer the phone. I literally sat on the floor in my sweaty work out clothes, old sneakers and I bawled. Any of that joy or hope had left every ounce of my body. I was that ten year old again and it crushed me. I knew that one of those angry God conversations was going to come. I poured my heart out as I stared out at nothing hoping that God would hear my prayers. I felt like I was back at square one. I didn’t know what the future was going to hold, I didn’t know if I could call the therapists and I didn’t know if I was strong enough. I felt like a complete and total failure. I felt like I was a bad person. After that day I was back in my bed, not showering, not eating regularly and feeling hopeless. I barely got out of bed until Monday and that was only because I had class. My hair was a mess, I looked gross and I felt disoriented. I went to class though and somehow felt exhausted.
It’s been about a week since I’ve written this post and I’ve avoided it like a plague. It didn’t help that this week has been a difficult week. It turns out that getting a appointment with a therapist takes longer than I thought. Instead of thinking about it to much, I bury myself in work, work out and wait for the therapist to call back. Normally I go straight to bed after working on something but instead I end up sitting on my bed, thinking. Normally, I don’t let myself do this because it could lead to something depressing or having a panic attack. I start thinking about the day and how much work I have to do tomorrow and how stressful classes are. Then the weirdest thing happens…I start laughing. It’s the kind of laughter that turns into giggling and you can’t stop. I have no idea why I’m laughing but I can’t stop and to be honest I don’t want to. I’m laughing at my current situation, the confusion, the stress, the way that my hair looks and the fact that I have no idea what the f*ck I’m doing. Life is sometimes a mess, it feels stupid, foggy and doesn’t make sense…right now. Then I start thinking about people and I realized something else…No one knows what they’re doing and there is always something new to learn. Therefore, nobody is perfect and nobody is ‘normal’, normal is just a less intimidating/fancy word that means perfect. I’ve spent so much time trying to be like everyone else and trying to be ‘normal’.
What a stupid thing to try to do.
Not everyone suffers from a mental illness and that can feel lonely. But, everyone has something, something to learn, pain to experience and it sucks. Pain feels unnecessary when you’re feeling it but it makes sense later on in life when it has passed. It’s a wonderful and horrible thing.
I’m done trying to be normal.
DFTBA
-AB
I am going to document this.
I’ve been suffering from depression and social anxiety for as long as I can remember. I didn’t realize something was truly wrong until my hair started to fall out when I was ten and I started questioning why I was here. I remember laying on the floor as a kid and crying because I felt so hopeless and worthless. I was never brave enough to tell people about what I was feeling and the fact that I was losing hair. One day in July my hairstylist found the bald patch on the back of my head. That was the beginning of a year long journey of going to doctors offices, using weird medical equipment, taking blood tests and long car rides to random doctors. Not once did I tell anyone that I wasn’t happy and that I was nervous all the time. In the end there wasn’t a concrete answer as to why my hair was falling out and it was miserable. I couldn’t believe how blind people were. I didn’t understand how people did not see how much I was suffering. I remember going home after the last doctor’s appointment in disappointment and almost tears. How could no one see what was wrong? When I got home I vowed to myself that I would be better when I got older. I told myself that I would be braver and ask for help. When I was ten I had hope in the older me, I thought that the older me would become more brave, stronger, wiser and be able to ask for the help that my ten year old self needed. Years passed though and I found myself getting worse and worse. There was always the excuse of, “I can do it later.” It’s a pathetic excuse but it is one that I used for years. I felt so much shame for not being like everyone else. There is a question that we get asked almost every single day by someone,
“How are you?”
It could be a friend, a employee who is obligated to ask etc. We even ask people this question on a regular basis.
Have you ever noticed that the answer is always the same?
“I’m fine.”
Or…
“I’m good, how are you?”
Sometimes we add the last part so we don’t have to keep talking about ourselves.
Most of the time we lie because we feel obligated to be okay. We can’t always be okay though, we’re taught to push down our actual feelings and pretend we have other ones. It’s this toxic cycle we keep going through in a attempt to be ‘normal’. As a ten year old I knew to lie about what I was feeling and learned to push it down inside. I knew that I wasn’t okay and I didn’t understand why it wasn’t okay to not be okay. I fell into that toxic, annoying, tedious cycle, just like everyone else for years.
In my writing class the first assignment that we had was to write a letter to our younger selves. To me, it was a daunting task because I knew I had to face that ten-year-old who had faith in that almost twenty-year-old. Also, I didn’t want anyone to read something that personal, at the same time I didn’t want to lie. Before doing the actual assignment, I sat on the floor with my typewriter and started writing a blunt letter to ten-year-old me. I basically apologized to my ten-year-old self. I apologized because I felt like I had failed and disappointed that scared ten-year-old. My ten-year-old self had so much hope in almost twenty-year-old me, I thought that I would be better, wiser and most importantly healed. It was when I sat on my bedroom floor to write that letter that I realized how little I had done and how bad things had gotten. When I finished writing the letter I felt terrible, I started to panic. What am I going to do? How am I going to get through life like this? How can I almost be twenty and not be able to talk to a stranger without freaking out? How am I going to get a job? Who is going to want to marry me? How am I going to be able to take care of a kid?
In the midst of this my family was trying to get me a job, soon enough my whole family was involved. My mind immediately went back to my first job, siting on the floor of a dirty bathroom, having a panic attack. I didn’t know how I was going to keep a job when I couldn’t even get to class. Eventually, my mom and aunt found a job and suddenly I was guaranteed a job that was very social. I didn’t know how to say that I couldn’t do it, it seemed as if no one would ever understand. I went through the whole process of filling out the application, meeting the boss and then I started to panic again. How am I going to do this? What if I’m not good enough for this? Then I proceeded to think about how everything would go wrong. I was sitting in the parking lot of the library, crying because I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t think that I would able to drive home.
“This isn’t living,” I realize. “This is barely breathing.”
I did end up getting home and I looked on the calendar to realize that I was seeing my doctor in two weeks. I could survive for two weeks. All the while I was getting phone calls from a person who was practically giving me a job. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up that phone. What was I going to say? What would I tell my parents? What would people think? My brain never stops working or thinking. Calls and texts began to pile on top of each other and once again I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. At this point the appointment was five days away, I could survive five days. I had no idea what that appointment was going to bring, I didn’t even know what I was going to say. That appointment came though and I was beyond nervous. I was going back and forth from thinking that I was going to say something and then I wasn’t. I went back to the small room and I waited for my doctor. I would have loved to have seen what I looked like because I felt miserable and nervous. Eventually, my doctor came in, we went over my bloodwork, made sure that everything was okay physically and then my appointment was coming to a close.
“Are you really not going to say anything?” I ask myself. “Are you just going to keep suffering and hope you say something the next time?”
It felt like my depression and anxiety were beating my mind and I had no idea what to do.
He finishes the paperwork, looks and me and asks, “Is there anything that’s bothering you?”
Time stops and I begin to speak.
I don’t exactly remember what I said because it came out like a flood of random words and sentences. I can put it in one sentence though,
“I need help.”
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I have the best doctor in the world.
He didn’t look at me like I was insane, he looked at me in complete understanding and sympathy.
“This is what we’re going to do,” he starts. “I’m going to give you a list of therapists that you can go to, the first week of August I want you to call me and tell me how you’re doing.”
He then proceeded to talk to me about taking anxiety medication and antidepressants the beginning of August, if I wanted. I was struggling to not cry and keep my jaw from dropping.
“This is happening,” I tell myself. “Things are going to get better.”
“You weren’t nervous about telling me this, right? You weren’t losing sleep over this?”
Only ten years and two weeks.
“No, I was fine.”
He finishes up more paperwork, documenting the anxiety and depression and I was unbelievably happy.
“That was incredibly brave,” he says earnestly.
I left that doctors office a more hopeful person. When I got to my car, I began to cry. I thought that I was going to have to jump through hoops to get them to believe me. I thought that it was going to take me forever to be able to get medication, to find a therapist etc. For the first time in a long time I felt safe and secure, I was going to be okay.
I completely forgot about the missed calls that were on my phone. All I could focus on was the joy that was inside of me.
The next day was completely different. I was working out when angry texts from members of my family and I realized what had happened. I had screwed up, bad. I had lost the job opportunity because I couldn’t answer the phone. I literally sat on the floor in my sweaty work out clothes, old sneakers and I bawled. Any of that joy or hope had left every ounce of my body. I was that ten year old again and it crushed me. I knew that one of those angry God conversations was going to come. I poured my heart out as I stared out at nothing hoping that God would hear my prayers. I felt like I was back at square one. I didn’t know what the future was going to hold, I didn’t know if I could call the therapists and I didn’t know if I was strong enough. I felt like a complete and total failure. I felt like I was a bad person. After that day I was back in my bed, not showering, not eating regularly and feeling hopeless. I barely got out of bed until Monday and that was only because I had class. My hair was a mess, I looked gross and I felt disoriented. I went to class though and somehow felt exhausted.
…
It’s been about a week since I’ve written this post and I’ve avoided it like a plague. It didn’t help that this week has been a difficult week. It turns out that getting a appointment with a therapist takes longer than I thought. Instead of thinking about it to much, I bury myself in work, work out and wait for the therapist to call back. Normally I go straight to bed after working on something but instead I end up sitting on my bed, thinking. Normally, I don’t let myself do this because it could lead to something depressing or having a panic attack. I start thinking about the day and how much work I have to do tomorrow and how stressful classes are. Then the weirdest thing happens…I start laughing. It’s the kind of laughter that turns into giggling and you can’t stop. I have no idea why I’m laughing but I can’t stop and to be honest I don’t want to. I’m laughing at my current situation, the confusion, the stress, the way that my hair looks and the fact that I have no idea what the f*ck I’m doing. Life is sometimes a mess, it feels stupid, foggy and doesn’t make sense…right now. Then I start thinking about people and I realized something else…No one knows what they’re doing and there is always something new to learn. Therefore, nobody is perfect and nobody is ‘normal’, normal is just a less intimidating/fancy word that means perfect. I’ve spent so much time trying to be like everyone else and trying to be ‘normal’.
What a stupid thing to try to do.
Not everyone suffers from a mental illness and that can feel lonely. But, everyone has something, something to learn, pain to experience and it sucks. Pain feels unnecessary when you’re feeling it but it makes sense later on in life when it has passed. It’s a wonderful and horrible thing.
I’m done trying to be normal.
DFTBA
-AB
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