This needs to be said

I suffer from mental illness.

You cannot know how much I hated typing that.

Yes, I know that mental illness does not have the kind of stigma that it used to.  But, the fact is, I was raised during a time where we might be understanding that someone has a mental illness, but we did not suffer from that sort of thing.

The funny thing is, no one thinks I don't suffer from the things I suffer from.  We just don't call it that.

Note:  The point of this post, I hope, will be clear to those who read it.  But in case it is not, this post is not soliciting advice about how to manage these issues.  Any comments telling me to medicate, see this or that professional or recommending mindful-this or new age that will be deleted.  

I'm pretty upfront about having depression.  For the few who still don't get what that means, it is not sadness.  It's not being blue or in the dumps.  The best I can describe it is as a kind of grayness.  Everything is less bright.  Things have less meaning than they should.  It becomes easy to intellectually wonder, why bother at all.

Luckily, my depression is pretty mild.  It is a thing that sometimes happens.  I can work through it, knowing that it is what it is and I go through the motions even if they feel pointless.  After a few days, or upon rare occasion weeks, I feel more like myself and move on.

I was first diagnosed with depression when I was 16.  Over the next few years I spent some bullshit time with psychiatrists (spelled with an M.D.)  This went on until I was 22 or so when I met with a new shrink, who after talking with me for 15 minutes declared the reason I had not had good results was because I was misdiagnosed.  I wasn't depressive, I was bi-polar.  I explained that I didn't really get the up (manic) swings that should come with that.  She was not bothered by this, she explained sometimes those represent differently.

And she had a solution.  A new medicine was out that would fix this.  Prozac.  She wrote a prescription and said we would follow up in a month.

3 weeks later, I tried to kill myself.  (The attempt was sincere, the execution was clumsy in a very Jeckles way.)  Luckily, I was able to avoid hospitalization, so no one but a very few friends ever knew it happened.  I never went back.  I stopped taking the meds.  The shrink never followed up to see if I was okay.  And I've never had the urge to commit suicide since.

So like I said, I manage it.  And that works for me.

Here's the thing, in the last six months, I've realized that depression is not the extent of my illness.

I suffer from extreme anxiety.  I always have.  (For what is worth, my therapist helped me identify this.)

The anxiety was always there, yet I did not have the vocabulary to describe it.  I had honestly believed that everyone had these kinds of thoughts in their heads.  but somehow they were better able to deal with it better.

What do I mean by anxiety?  Some situations,  usually those that contain a fair degree of uncertainty, cause me stress and discomfort.  Going to a new place, meeting new people, any number of changes can cause this.

Sometimes it is mild.  Going to a gathering where I do not know many of the people, for example, will cause me to try to play it out how it will go.  Play out every variable and possible scenario.  I try to prepare so that I can know what to do when it happens.  Typically, I obsess on it for a bit, then the thing, whatever it is, happens and wouldn't you know it, it turns out fine.

But sometimes I can't visualize it, there are too many unknowns.  This paralyzes me.  I can't proceed because I don't know what is going to happen.  Maybe, I just don't show up.  Maybe I do show up, but I've worked myself to such a state that I can't function correctly.  Maybe I stay off to the side and don't interact.  Maybe I have to engage and my words run on top of themselves as I try to do the thing despite the panic that builds up inside of me.  Maybe it's a social situation and I have drink to relax.  Maybe that helps.  Maybe I drink too much because no amount of booze can ease the panic at that point.

That last scenario has embarrassed me to varying degrees more than once.  (Some will say I just have a drinking problem.  I say that the word just underestimates the complexity of the situation.)

I've always been very aware that I do this.  I simply didn't understand that this was something that not everyone faces.  Again, I believed until very recently that everyone else just handled it better.  Now I'm coming to understand that perhaps most people just walk in to a situation without much thought at all.

Imagine the scenario where my significant other says, 'let's do something fun today.'  I say, 'sure, what do you want to do?'  'Doesn't matter, whatever, let's be spontaneous!'  My chest starts to tighten.  I start asking questions, trying to eliminate the uncertainty.  She becomes irritated and questions why we can't just do some fun.  I try.  Really try to play along, but now the conversation is edging towards an argument and I don't know how that is going to go either.  My pulse races, my temper gets shorter.  I demand that she just tell me what she wants, and I'll make it happen.  She is now angry and... Just. Doesn't. Understand. Why. This. Always. Happens.

And at the time, I couldn't explain it.  I lacked the vocabulary.

(In case you were wondering this was not something that only happened with my most recent ex.  This has played out in many relationships.)

At least now, I know that is what an anxiety attack looks like, for me anyhow.  Just understanding that is extremely helpful.

I know this is getting to be a long post, and I apologize for that.  Consider the above background, because I have yet to come anywhere near my point.

In the last 18 months I've suffered two traumas.  First, my wife left me and for all intents and purposes vanished into thin air.  Then 14 weeks later, I lost my job of 6.5 years for no good reason.  Maybe these things should not have traumatized me, I understand that many people have been through much worse, yet there is no doubt that these events where traumatic to me.

And since then I've had moments where I sort of re-live conversations with her, or moments at work.  Moments that indicate that these things should not have happened.  Or moments that in hindsight foretold clearly that they would.

Sometimes these episodes, for lack of a better word, last a split second.  I physically shake my head, or say out loud. "shut the fuck up" to make it go away and it does.  It is unsettling, but over time this is happening with less frequency.  I find these shorter episodes have become pretty manageable.

Other times, they last longer.  They start the same way, but then one image, one memory collides into the next.  My anxiety kicks in.  I start to replay the situations.  Try to figure out how they should have gone.  Try to fix them... even though they are set in stone.  My pulse soars.  My breathing becomes shallow and rapid.  I'm panicking about things that have happened over a year ago.  It's like a bad horror movie where I see myself going into the basement where the ax murderer is hiding, but no matter how loud I shout in my head, I can't stop it from happening.  These last maybe 5 minutes, maybe an hour.  But once I finally get past the worst of it, I'm drained.

The first month she was gone, these things happened 20 to 30 times a day.  Mostly short little episodes.  Now, they may happen once every day or two.  The full blown panic attacks maybe once every two weeks.

I am confident that this will continue to get better with time.  For that, I am grateful.

The reason I am telling you about this is, simply, because I don't know who you are.  This blog is virtually unread (due mostly to the fact that I rarely bother to update it.)  Be that as it may, someone will eventually read this, and that is important to me.  I want to explain this to someone, anyone, because I've been utterly unable to articulate this to the people I do know in the real world.

In the last few weeks I've had a few conversations with a some friends and family.  They start like, " are you giving up on getting a real job?"  Or "It seems like sometimes you just shut down, what's going on with you?"  To me, these conversations, although I know they are well meaning, all sound like, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Sometimes, I try to explain.  But I never get far.  I tell them that I'm still trying deal with the fact that she left or that the former job left me high and dry.  Before I can even really start to explain what this is like for me, they will interrupt with, "that was over a year ago" or some such response that has a veiled 'why the fuck can't you move on?' buried in it.

The fact is that I am moving on.  Not as fast, as well or as normally as they might like.  But I am.

So back to the beginning.  I suffer from mental illness.  Under normal circumstances, I manage pretty well.  For the last 18 months, not so well.  But I'm getting there.  If my issues were physical and visible, I'd hope that people would be more patient and accommodating.  But they are invisible.  While there may be less stigma, no one wants to hear that you are mentally ill.

So, here I am, telling  this to you, because maybe you will understand.  I can handle the rest.  I would really just like to be heard and understood for once.