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Viewing entries tagged
anxiety
If you are someone like me, when a mental health curveball suddenly comes hurdling through, having an episode that stretches from days to months is not uncommon - just incredibly frustrating and distracting. Truth is, sometimes the start of a new year might actually come in the summer.
In the spring of 2015 I started going to therapy for the first time. I was a couple of months away from going through with a pre-planned suicide attempt for my 25th birthday before, almost at the last minute, I randomly sought help. With a series of unexpected deaths and abusers that lined my mental oasis, the seeds of depression had bore the fruits of fear, self-harm and loathing. Making my peace with God, I counted down the days until I turned 25.
“People with Borderline Personality Disorder, like you,” Michael started but his words trailed into terrifying darkness as I cast my eyes about the narrow room. Whom, I thought, is he addressing? Certainly, I don’t have Borderline. I went home and took every online self-assessment test for Borderline that I could locate. The diagnosis remained the same… severe Borderline Personality Disorder profile.
This COVID-19, this has changed everything. Nothing will be the same. When I’m suffocating in my own presence in my apartment I quietly gasp for clarity with these little Zoom calls, texts and Netflix viewing parties. I see all these beautiful pixelated faces. All these souls that I rather experience in person - a luxury that I can’t have. I patiently wait for them as their picture flickers on the screen and as the glitches finally sync their words with their mouth. I yearn for the familiar voice of those who know me best. It feels like most times my soul is trying to leap through the glass just to be with the ones I love. I feel foolish.
Usually, I kept my face neutral and straight and did not talk at all. Sometimes, my oppressed feelings would burst out as tears, ranting, and self harm. I cried that I wanted to die rather than living. One family member would respond: “Then go out and kill yourself." At those moments, I felt I was unable to speak anymore, so I would go to my room or outside to cry and do things to relieve anxiety such as biting my fingers or tearing books. Throughout the years, I became accustomed to the violence around me.
The physician's cure for this “slight hysterical tendency” was rest, fresh air and absolutely no work or social gatherings. It is clear as the story progresses what harm this isolation does to the main character. By the end of the story the woman does not want to leave the room that has been enlisted for her rest and envisions herself as a part of the rooms yellow wallpaper – the only stimulus in her secluded world.
The thoughts and fears that are easily ignored in the brightness of sunshine are waiting for you under the cover of darkness, lurking in shadowy corners, poised to strike. There’s nowhere for you to hide, and so you must suffer in silence, on your back, in your bed, staring at the ceiling with wide, itchy eyes.
