What "Surviving" Really Looks Like

"You just do it.  You force yourself to get up.  You just force yourself to put one foot in front of the other, and God damn it, you refuse to let it get to you.  You fight.  You cry.  You curse.  Then you go about the business of living.  That's how I've done it.  There's no other way.  ~ Elizabeth Taylor

I'm finally at work after a failed attempt to get ready for the day.  I’m sitting here, writing this over the course of the past 5 hours, trying to think of something to email my boss to sugarcoat what I’m feeling, to really drive home the point that getting out of bed today was unbearable for me and that I don't see myself doing it tomorrow when I have to work either.  In my inability to get up after only sleeping for an hour I got out the door in 5 minutes;  my unwashed hair pulled into a ponytail, teeth unbrushed and no makeup on.  Thank the heavens that my room is still organized enough so that I can grab clothes and go and look good enough to leave the house.  You see, if it was the flu or a bad head cold this would be easy.  I would simply relay the symptoms and be excused with a general “feel better” and a hidden relief that I wouldn’t be getting anyone else sick.  To make a phone call saying I just had to take a breather on the side of the road in Searsport because my lungs felt as if they were collapsing and my body was shaking so badly that I had to pull over because I could hardly drive doesn’t do the trick.

Yesterday was great.  I had time to shower and looked great for work.  I went flower shopping with my aunt and made her cake for her elopement last night.  I took pictures, engaged in conversation like nothing was ever wrong.  I went over to my other friend's house (the one I'm dating) and watched some TV and hung out for a few hours.  For once, the battle that rages in my mind between functional and afraid was quieted.  

Every time I feel my chest get heavy, my hands get sweaty, my vision become disconnected, I tell myself to suck it up;  that it’s all in my head.  Maybe it is.  That’s certainly where this monster lives - this unwelcomed existential dread about nothing in particular paired with a fear of what's in the shadows.  Not able to shake the feeling that I'm being watched or followed;  telling myself that it's over now and it shouldn't ever happen again.  But tell that to my body when I’m home alone at the bottom of my shower, unable to move or think or breathe when I can't remember if I locked the front door and I heard a nonexistent thing creeping through the house - and I know how irrational I feel, but I can't do a thing to stop the wave from coming. Tell that to my ears that simply decide to stop hearing and scream with hollow ringing that disorients me to the point of defeat. Tell that to the girl who has sat on grimy floors in restaurant bathrooms who had to take a second to rest her overwhelmed mind and procrastinated the day away in bed because, for a few moments, she can’t remember how to exist.

I'm learning how to trust the world again.  It's really hard to do that when everything you thought you knew about those closest to you turn out to be less than ideal.  Yes, I'll put it that way for those who don't know.  Not everything is everyone's business.  In November when the "I'm fine" mask started to malfunction and pretty much quit entirely I took 3 weeks off from work to get help.  I started therapy, which has been my saving grace.  I am on medication as needed for anxiety and have learned to ride the waves enough to not take it every day.  Mostly out of my sheer refusal to do so.  I don't allow myself to take anything if I know that life is requiring me to be functional.  But I'm a single mom of 2 teenagers with 2 jobs....life is always requiring me to be functional....and that's the damn problem.  

My big girl panties are permanently welded on, I cannot pull them up any higher.

Things weren't always this bad.  I've always had some low lying depression throughout my life, but explainable by the circumstances surrounding me.  Over the past 18 months there have been a lot of changes and things going on that have thrown my mind into full blown "Can't take any more crisis" mode when it's something that I've always been able to take in stride;  no matter the situation or what "it" was.  They say there’s a science behind it.  That it’s just how I work now.  How am I supposed to love my mind if I constantly doubt its ability to decipher reality from fiction?  I don’t know how anyone enjoys that high.  It makes me sad, the lowest I’ve ever felt, feeling incapable of performing in my day-to-day life without an artificial aid.  But I’ve come to terms with the idea that sometimes there is no other option.  I hope one day I’ll be okay with that.
   
I fear having to tell the people in my life that I’m on medication because the second I do, I see my fears written across their faces.  The fact that I have to take a dose of something just to make me feel like I’m residing on some middle ground that makes me capable of mandatory human function, I fear, immediately sets off alarms that I am a lesser person; lacking independence and radiating unpredictability. All of a sudden I’m the crazy, mentally unstable girl completely incompetent and incapable of any mundane task in front of me.  I can't shake the notion that in the eyes of others, it makes me a liar.  Lazy.  Inadequate.  Delusional.  Crazy.  None of that could be farther from the truth about who I really am.  And then if I have enough strength in me to tell them what caused this mess, I have to relive everything through explanations (my "script" has been written in my mind and in the office of my therapist) and then suddenly everyone becomes either sympathetic or needs to tell me the story of the time it happened to someone they know.  There is not one person that I have told that hasn't been completely perplexed about how I hide it so well.  How would they know?  It's not like I walk around with a huge sign over my head.  Hell, some even suddenly become a doctor and tell me I'm fine, or want to know about meds and my treatment and therapy and what coping skills I'm using....they push for more information or shut down the discussion right away because actually acknowledging the fact that bad things happen is just too much.  And then there are the "detectives" who think that they need all the information about it, and try to tell me all the legal advice they picked up on television - thanks to CSI everyone is a forensic scientist.  Thanks for that, not.  Most of the time I don't bother to say I have a diagnosis because, frankly, society has been conditioned to think I’m either a deranged psychopath or I’m faking it because I’m simply too fragile to face life like a normal person.  Do they think I find this fun?

I’ve begun to believe it myself.  I can’t even convince myself I’m not insane.  I can’t get over the possibility that every trigger, every panic, is rooted deep in my overactive imagination who happens to be a spiteful little bitch that likes to see me squirm.  It’s in the calm moments I feel it most. When I’m finally content and that sharp jab of terror hits the sweet spot in the middle of my throat, closing in until I’m choking on what I thought I saw in the shadows. It’s so vivid I can see the muscles contracting, my body starts to itch as I fear…what? What is it that I am so afraid of? It’s the imaginary evils that sneak up and get me in the moments I least expect it.  It’s the seconds of doubt that turn into gut-wrenching reservations and claustrophobic mind racing that drives me right back under my sheets until a glimmer of light breaks through the shades and my alarm goes off for the fifth time after hitting snooze in avoidance of having to screw the smile on and place nice with others.  It’s the darkest days and the brightest nights because there really is no good time I can escape it.   
   
My only saving grace is that because I explained what happened to me, my doctor's believed me.  That I have a job that I've been at long enough to qualify for family medical leave so that when I'm have "a day" I can get through it and not worry about my job being something I don't have when I finally am able to snap myself out of it.  I’ve officially been categorized, embossed, labeled with the word, “PTSD" and "Situational Anxiety.”  I feel like a sick scam. Who am I to say I’m hindered when there’s nothing visibly wrong with me; when some days I function at 110 percent and nothing can hold me back.  I swear I am most productive when I am so exhausted that no other human would be conscience, let alone functional.  There are many who have it much worse than me, and because my vices cannot be seen from the surface (because I don't allow the beast out of its cage for all to see) they’re perceived as fake.  It’s a bittersweet sentiment knowing my flaws are something that I'm able to process in a way that allows me to pretend they don’t exist while someone is watching.  I thrive in the precious moments I spend being normal.  I cripple in the instances I must try to explain the place I’m coming from, the place no one will ever truly understand until they feel their heart stop beating in their chest only to accelerate far past a normal rhythm.  

 I'm getting better at deciphering/navigating/predicting what I need.  I refuse to let myself give in to the impulses that I used to follow without hesitation.  I have dyed my hair twice, once in November (I was hoping mid-way through my leave that it would help me feel better and of course it didn't), along with chopping 8 inches off and a couple of weeks ago.  I'm very much a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of person.  And aside from what happened, my life is pretty much the same;  but I'm not.  There just simply isn't calm in the familiar any more.  Despite being completely happy with the career that I have currently, I have applied for and accepted a job in the Oncology dept. of the same hospital I currently work at.  I hope to still stay per Diem where I work currently.  I thought that by keeping the same routine that things would fall back into place where they were before and that everything would be back to fine after a while.  I need a change.  As fearful as I am that it's not going to get better, I'm realistic that it's not going to be an instant fix.  Hope is more powerful than I could have ever imagined; and I have a lot of it.

I’m a fighter.  I hate the guilt I feel every time I have to plan my day around the amount of anxiety I've become programmed to anticipate and needing to to gauge whether or not I'm going to need something to get through it.  But I want to succeed.  I want to be truly happy without the after effects of it being more painful than exorcising a demon.  Every day I find something to be happy about and cherish;  and it's always paired with the overwhelming "what if?"  What if this never happened to me?  What if I am never going to be the same?  Then paired with "Do I even want to be the same?"  I'm done just doing the bare minimum just to get through the day.  I want to live, and not just in a shell of a body with blood pumping through it.  I would love nothing more than to get past this mess and be done with it.  That's my dream.  Here's to hope.