This last year has been a tough year for me and my daughter. After her father and I split up, I wound up renting the basement apartment from my parents, lost my car and transferred her to a brand new school. Needless to say about halfway through summer, I started to have really bad anxiety. At times, it was so bad I thought I would completely lose my mind.
The thing is, I have been having anxiety and panic attacks for years, and never realized what it was. I’ve been to the doctor countless times because of the heart flutters that coincide with panic, but couldn’t get a clear diagnosis. I had so much blood work, I could probably give eight people transfusions, enough chest X-rays to be prohibited from entering an airport safely and performed many circus-like heart stress tests. All of the results came back normal each time, only adding to the stress of not knowing what was going on with my body.
Eventually, I switched to a new doctor, and in our very first visit he said, “I think you have acute underlying anxiety disorder.” I didn’t want to believe him, so he tested me for asthma and a variety of other things, all of which came back normal. My next visit, he checked my lungs and promised me that the fact that I used to be a smoker did not mean I would die a horrible lung-cancer related death before I was fifty. The symptoms returned about two months ago, worsening each time and creating such horrible anxiety I was losing sleep over it.
After another round of blood work, all of which came back normal, my doctor and I sat down together on Friday and talked about anxiety again. After talking to him about some of the crazy stuff I have gone through this last year, he finally said he thought it might be a good idea to treat the problem as anxiety.
I told him I didn’t want to come to terms with the fact that I had anxiety because throughout the course of my life, I have always been the person who held everything together. If I admitted I had anxiety, wouldn’t that make me weak and less able-bodied to deal with all the things I had been clenching tight to my entire life?
Then he said my reaction was common, especially in women with children. As mothers, we don’t want to let our children down, or show them any weakness. Instead of being scared out loud, or expressing our fears and concerns, we hold them inside until the overwhelm us and we start to slowly fall apart. Maybe we gain weight without reason, or find ourselves tossing and turning in bed for hours at night. Sometimes we have panic attacks with fear so severe, we stop doing the things we love.
When he started to talk about putting me on medication for anxiety and depression, he quelled my worry before I could even entertain it out loud. What if I turned into a zombie? One of the reasons I had avoided the notion of taking an antidepressant was because I was afraid it might interfere with my creativity and natural behavior. The medication isn’t supposed to do that. We’re supposed to still have feelings.
So, I agreed to start taking an antidepressant. At first I had a twinge of anxiety in the back of my mind that I was admitting defeat, but the more I thought about it, hope that the choice would make me stronger prevailed. I want to be strong for my daughter; to be able to hold myself and our life together the best I can, and I can’t do that when I’m feeling like the world is falling apart every day.
Anxiety sucks the life out of you, if you let it. I don’t want to let it anymore.
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