I don't talk about my feelings.
It's not the model I was raised with. That's not a slam on my parents, whom I love very much and who I know love me, just an observation. I was with my dad and one of my sisters recently, and he commented that my niece and nephew make him feel like he's on his death bed because of how much they say, "I love you." My sister turned to me and said, "Now we know why we're so uncomfortable expressing that." It's true: we're an emotionally reserved family.
I had my first panic attack just after my fifteenth birthday - 'cause, I mean, what do you get the girl who has everything? It was mid-November. I was a sophomore in high school and it was the night of one of the performances of our fall show. In a freak accident, a friend of mine had been injured during one of her scenes. Most of us had been down in the greenroom when it happened and didn't find out about it until we were about to go onstage for the finale. Adrenaline pushed me through the curtain call, but when I got back downstairs, the room felt like it was crushing me. I was hot, my heart was racing, everything sounded like I was underwater but I felt like I was on fire, and I couldn't breathe.
And I don't talk about this in detail. Really. Ever. I'll say, "I had a panic attack," and move on. Typing all of those words just now made me ridiculously uncomfortable. So forgive the lack of eloquence that may occur as we progress, because I don't know that I'll be able to go back and make adjustments.
The anxiety storm that led to this first explosion had been building since September, something that I touched upon here. My brain's inability to process that didn't absolve it of the need to do so, and I think that this incident - this chance occurrence of injury being done to someone in my life (obviously - and thankfully - with much less lethal stakes) pulled every thought and feeling and worry that had been spinning silently in my head for months together into a single ball of awfulness that I couldn't contain anymore.
It's not my friend's fault that it happened. I don't think I ever actually told her that. We're not really in touch anymore, and I'm sure she knows it, but it absolutely wasn't her fault. If it hadn't happened then, it would've happened another time for some other reason.
Fifteen. That was my introduction to my issues with anxiety and depression, but I didn't feel I was allowed to take ownership of those words. It wasn't because of the stigma that's so often and so unfairly attached to them. Naively, I thought that because I hadn't reached an extreme - because I wasn't suicidal or afraid to leave my house - I didn't have the right to say I was depressed or anxious. Which was dumb. But we're all dumb sometimes, and I didn't know how to ask for help yet.
I'm going to make a long story slightly shorter: it was a long, long time before I figured out how to ask for help.
Let's fast forward ten or eleven years. I'd treated the chemical component of my anxiety but was still managing the emotional side on my own - sometimes very well, sometimes very poorly. When I was good, I was good. When I was bad, I wasn't sleeping because I couldn't turn off my brain and worry upon worry upon worry stacked up until I started to feel like I was on fire again. Occasionally, out of nowhere, I'd wake up consumed by a crushing wave of just...blackness. I don't know how else to describe it - just a darkness that made it feel as though nothing had ever been awesome, nor would it ever be awesome again.
But I wasn't suicidal, so I couldn't have been depressed. Again, mid-twenties and still not very bright.
All joking aside, I really thought I was okay. I had accepted that this was what my life was - mostly good days peppered with horrifying but apparently manageable periods of abject terror and total soul-crushing blackness. There was zero awareness on my part that I had spent the better part of a decade suppressing and ignoring my feelings in an effort to protect myself from them, essentially propping myself up with sticks and string and chewed-up bubblegum whenever things got structurally unsound.
Zero awareness, until a year ago. I've written about this before - perhaps ad nauseam for you at this point - but anniversaries tend to inspire introspection, and this is no exception for me. I want to...I don't know, really place this into context so that I never forget just how big it was, because I think we have a tendency to rewrite our own histories as time goes on.
A year ago tomorrow, I went to The JV Club podcast live at SF Sketchfest. The guest was Tig Notaro, who had been on before but was back to have what ended up being one of the most incredibly honest, sensitive, and somehow still funny conversations possible about the mountain of trials and loss that had been thrown at her kind of all at once. Being there changed my life, but I don't necessarily want to remember it so grandly. I didn't buy a ticket as an active step toward anything. I almost didn't buy a ticket at all, because I wasn't sure I could stretch my paycheck that far - about a week before the show, I was thankfully seized by a sudden burst of carpe diem energy that overrode my sense of fiscal responsibility.
I went because I liked Tig and I liked Janet. I liked the podcast too, though I'd stopped listening during the summer, right around when my grandmother had died. I didn't know what was going to happen to me as a result of being in that audience. When I stepped out of the theatre and back into the light of day, I still didn't quite understand what had happened - there was no ray of light, no chorus of birds or choir of angels revealing my new path to me. I just knew that the experience had changed me.
I also knew, almost right away, why I'd stopped listening to the podcast when I did: it made me feel stuff and, at that time, I'd run out of space to feel. So I stopped all of that, suppressed everything, and cut out all the extra stuff that had a chance of getting through. That afternoon, I decided to stop doing that. I started to feel again, and for maybe the first time ever, I started making an honest effort to be really mindful of those feelings - to understand them rather than just move past them.
Let me be real with you: it was a messy, oftentimes overwhelming process. Remember when we jumped forward ten years? Well, during that time, turns out I'd created a lot of drawers to hide uncomfortable stuff in so that I wouldn't have to deal with it, and unpacking really sucks. But the kind of nice thing, especially in the beginning when I wasn't quite sure how to start, was that I had all these JV Club episodes that I hadn't listened to. Catching up on them helped me start navigating the emotional mine field that was my brain.
There was still a problem, though, and maybe you've already identified it: I was still going it alone. Knowing that I couldn't keep living the way I had been was one thing; figuring out how to reach out was another, and I wasn't there yet.
After a couple of weeks spent burning through podcast episodes, I reached Maria Bamford's. I was in L.A. for a Doctor Who convention (obviously), and was on an LAX Flyaway shuttle, (I can't drive, and the rather creative multi-leg journey I took to get to the convention from my sister's apartment each day is a story in and of itself) headed back to the underground station for the night, when suddenly the conversation turned toward mental illness. For the first time ever, I was hearing someone describing many of the feelings that I'd had - and still had - when in the grip of a panic attack. Not a textbook, not a doctor, but a person speaking from experience.
And I started to cry.
I don't cry easily and I don't cry often, but right there, in the dark on the LAX Flyaway, next to some poor bastard in a business suit who probably just wanted to go home, it happened. I don't think I ever realized how alone I'd felt until that moment when I finally understood that I wasn't. It was huge, so much so that it pushed back my shyness long enough for me to sit down and write to Janet to say thank you, because to simply let something like that stand without acknowledging and appreciating what a gift it was would've felt wrong.
I did not write expecting a response - really, truly, I just wanted to put my gratitude out into the universe - but I got one. And it was so incredibly kind and thoughtful that I wondered why I'd been so nervous about sending my message in the first place (answer: I'm me, and if it's possible to worry about something, I will. Like a champion.). I even got comfortable with the idea of writing in again, not just for the sake of doing so, but if I felt compelled to respond to something on the podcast. It was a nice thought.
Maybe a month later, the blackness came to visit, bleak and heavy and horrible. When I wasn't shut in my room in bed, I was out in the world, every nerve alive with anxiety. I had an idea of where it was coming from, and - rather fortuitously - the same issue came up on an episode of the podcast that I listened to. So I wrote in. And the specifics of the response I got are kind of something I just want to hold onto for me, but know that it did accomplish two things: 1) it made me feel better, and 2) it finally - finally - put this thought in my head: I. Need. Help.
I want to tell you that I was super responsible and got in touch with my doctor the next day, but that would be a lie, and I would never do that to you. Knowing I needed help and actually getting it were still two separate points I needed to navigate, but everything was clicking into place at a much more rapid pace. Everything I'd been pushing down or denying since I was fifteen, either out of fear or shame or confusion, was coming together and flashing like a neon sign every time I closed my eyes: "You struggle with anxiety. You struggle with depression. It may not be the extreme, but it's your extreme. Get. Help."
And, at long last, I did. I talked to my doctor about my options and got a referral for a therapist. I dealt with the anxiety I had about talking to a stranger and actually started seeing that therapist. My problems haven't all necessarily been solved, per se; I don't even know that I think that's a thing. But I have the tools to manage them, and while I may have to re-learn how to use them every once in awhile, I know that those tools are there. If I ever start to forget, all I have to do is look at the tattoo I put on my wrist to remind me how to get back.
You want to know what the best part is? I can talk about my feelings now. Sure, my initial instinct is still to deflect and suppress, but I'm aware of it now, and I'm taking active steps to stop it. My relationships are better because of it. I am better because of it. I'm bolder and stronger and more confident because I'm not spending all my time fighting to stay upright.
My life didn't change in a year. I changed it. I embraced it. And it still sucks sometimes. There is still fear and blackness and fire - I don't romanticize that, and I don't pretend to love it. But I do love being alive. I love having ownership of everything I am.
I love it so damn much.
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