When Life Goes Wrong

I have recently started facing things in my life that have caused me great stress. The past few months have been some of the hardest months of my life so far. There have been ups, but mostly downs. Now, I am most definitely not the person to come to for coping advice, but I am learning slowly.

I started realizing that my stress was causing me to act out and shut myself away to the point that it was starting to effect my relationship. And this hurt me. My boyfriend is the most amazing, understanding person who has ever been in my life and even he could only handle so much. I was hurting him by hiding away from him while I (didn't) deal with my stress.

I decided, against my fears, to go see a doctor about what to do. That scared me, I didn't want a professional to tell me something was wrong with me. I mean, I had my reasons to feel stressed, I've been dealing with chronic back pain for over a year now, been dealing with excruciating pain around by right lower rib for about 6 months and neither have I been able to get answers for yet. It's frustrating to be in so much pain everyday, and not knowing what was causing it or how to fix it.

But upon going to the doctors, I have been faced with the realization that I have been dealing with depression, severe anxiety, and insomnia. Now anxiety I already knew about. I know it runs through the family, and it's something I've always had. I dealt with it fine until I started getting really bad asthma about almost 2 years ago. On a family road trip, I had the scariest asthma attack I've ever had, thought I was dying and there wasn't even a hospital in the small town I was in. It triggered such bad anxiety afterwords that for almost a whole year, I was so terrified of going outside and being by myself (because naturally those would be the worst times to get an asthma attack) that I was constantly worried. I was scared to go to school, scared to walk to a friends house, even scared to be home alone. I would go from one room to the next making sure my inhaler was right by my side.

My anxiety has stuck around since but I am better at relaxing and breathing through it. My insomnia however, started when I started college two years ago. I was stressing myself out so bad because I wasn't sure if I was in the right program and that I was making a mistake and wasting my parents money to the point where I wouldn't be able to sleep. Even though, since last April, I have no longer been going to school ( a whole other story), my insomnia is still with me. It's something I have also come to terms with. I can't really say its something you get used to, but it becomes routine. Staying up to watch a movie that I can barely keep my eyes open through, go to bed assuming that's a sign I will fall straight asleep and end up laying there for hours, so tired, but unable to fall asleep. And once I can finally fall asleep, I either wake up so many times through the night or wake up so early that I'm still so tired and out of it for the rest of the day. It sucks, but I deal with it.

But to now learn that I also suffer from depression. I knew I had it almost 3 years ago, after dealing with traumatic things going on in my life but I never really thought it hung around. But I guess after dealing with a few too many stressful moments over the last year, it has finally really caught up with me, making my anxiety and insomnia worse and creating such an irritable, sad girl to be around.

Even though I am more of a believer in holistic healing and not a huge fan of meds, I have been prescribed a very light dose of anti-depressants in hopes that it can at least make me happy enough to start doing things I used to love doing. If I can begin to start doing the things that make me happy, then the sooner I can get off the meds and start mentally helping myself get better. This is a journey that I'm terrified about but also excited about.

Researching more about depression and what causes it and how many people deal with has helped me to really see that I'm not alone. This is just that part of life where we have to learn how to deal with the rocks that come our way and that there is a way to get passed them and to learn how to better dope with it the next time. I know that if I'm scared, then there are other people who are also scared about this same journey. But, my favourite quote, “pain demands to be felt.” A quote that only now, I have so much love for. Feeling your pain and understanding it, is the first step at moving forward.