I sat with my monsters… I sat with them, until I could love and accept them, until their ugliness turned into a sort of lovely cuteness that I can live with. Still, sometimes they forget their place and start to whisper and then yell. Here’s the thing that I never forget. They are both right and wrong. I am not where I want to be (yet) and I continually strive for more. But I AM good enough, and most days I do better than the day before. Those monsters? They are important to me, a part of me that I don’t want around me all the time, but I need them some of the time. To have them pop in at times so I remember where I have come from. I need them around me simply so I can remember where I have come from, so that I can grow. They force me to look at status quo and through their unwavering gaze, I know I need to change, to move to another plane of being. Other times, I just sit with my monsters, accept them and allow them to be.
—
Lynn DeVasto
almost exactly 9 months ago (october 23) i was so confused and vulnerable and i plucked up the courage to take the first step to ask because i just wanted answers... but little did i know that i'd be getting a lot more than just answers. over the months i've discovered parts of myself that i didn't even knew existed and i definitely found out a lot more about what my body (and mind) was capable of doing. a few minutes before my first panic attack in mid january i was trembling and shaking and my heart was pounding harder than anything i've experienced before... but i only attributed it to pre-presentation nervousness. that evening, it took me (and 4 other people) around 1h45min to fully calm myself down. it wasn't the last - some were "better", and some were worse (i.e. happened-in-an-auditorium-in-front-of-200-people-and-everybody-had-to-be-evacuated-because-of-me kind of worse). i couldn't breathe properly and i couldn't move from where i had "fell" on the floor. i remember just screaming and bawling because i was so, so, so, so, so scared. i felt like i had been posessed because i had lost ALL control over myself and my mind, and i was terrified that i was going to die.
it wasn't just the panic attacks that were haunting me: there were the constant rituals that were constantly pushing me to do things 2 or 3 times or more (but never 4 or 6 because they're evil numbers)(8 was a good number though), and the horrible horrible horrible automatic dysfunctional thoughts that told me i wasn't good enough and that the scholarship and multiple distinctions and director's list awards meant NOTHING because I got 14/20 for ONE group project. i'm thankful because i know that there were more good days than there were bad but even on "good" days the thoughts, the rituals, they were still there and i knew they weren't healthy at all. i never really mentioned this here before because i know that there's a stigma with mental health and seeking help, but i did just that. i didn't mean to, but somehow everything fell right into place and i'm glad it did.
i know i don't have it as "bad" as some others do (and i'm extremely thankful) but it doesn't mean that it wasn't hard. and then again with that being said, it also doesn't mean that there won't be a possibility that things might get even worse in the future. because with anxiety, it never really goes away. it's been almost 7 years and some years are definitely worser than the others, so i know that it's going to come back. but when it does come back, i'm going to know how to deal with it a lot better than i did 9 months ago. today marks the 16th (and the second last one!!!!) and it's not something i'm used to but it's a rather liberating feeling to know that yeah, i am coping a lot better than when i first stepped into that room with the squeaky chair and box of tissues on the table. i'm still learning but i am in a better place right now (though not the best) and like mav said, it is something worth celebrating over so that's... good.
and i know i've said this like five hundred times but i'm so so so so so so thankful for all the genuine love and support i've received from the people around me over the past year (and more)... and i just hope that i'm not going to disappoint.
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