Is This Rock Bottom?

It's time for honesty...
I'm not cured from this. I'm still living it. And I don't have it figured out whatsoever. So I'm probably going to contradict myself a lot. This now marks the first entry of this blog not being written with the subconscious mindset that my college prof/dean of my major is reading it. Things will change, as they always do. The moment that I think I have things figured out and I'm standing on solid ground - an earthquake happens and I fall even farther down into the infinite abyss of my madness.
I am mad.
I accept this fact. I know it. I live it. I breathe it.
An earthquake has not happened to make me say these things. No. It's like the ground beneath my feet slowly turned to gravel and it's running out like an hourglass. And I'm falling down farther again.
At this point in my life, I believe that I am at the lowest point that I have been since this whole "panic" thing started several years ago.
Things changed.
I grew up. (Somewhat) And suddenly all of these problems didn't seem so "pre-school" in the sense that any problem could be fixed by my parents. I mean that's typical though right? Last year, I left for college and broke away from the dependence I had on my parents to pick me up if I ever fell down. This transition rocked my life and my panic has slowly been getting worse and worse ever since. Now its a year and a half later and I can't ride in a car with anyone. Not my parents, my brothers, my best friends, or ride the bus by myself. And now I even get nervous driving by myself. This was never the case before. If anything else, I would be okay if I was with my parents or my brothers. I even got to the point in high school when I could ride around with my friends. Hell, I even rode with them in their cars to the SouthSide and back. That's a thirty minute car ride at least. That is something that I feel my heart trying to jump from my chest just thinking about it. And then if it really came down to it, I could drive myself. No matter what. And now I'm thinking about where I can stop if something happens. 
What does this mean?
I have no idea.
But the only thing I can conclude is that I do not feel comfortable around anyone. Not even myself.
I constantly feel like I'm about to jump out of my body.
And sometimes I wish I can.






I'm listening to:

Bon Iver
For Emma, Forever Ago
"Skinny Love"

Drugs, Alcohol, and Social Disorders

The doctors always warned me that self-medication with drugs and alcohol was common in my condition. It makes sense. A normal person lets go of all their social anxieties and insecurities when they are drunk or high. Persons with panic are no different. I've experienced first hand that when I am under the influence, life is easier. Every obstacle I face I just jump over and say "Fuck it, I'm drunk!" and let it ride. I do not self medicate myself whatsoever at all, even knowing this and knowing that it is very tempting. The only reason I know these things is because I have experienced these influences but not in the purpose of ridding my anxiety or pain. But really, what is the difference between self-medicating myself with drugs and alcohol and a doctor telling me that it is okay with their drugs?

I am prescribed a drug that is a strong depressant. I am to take it whenever I feel a large obstacle coming and I know that my anxiety will be a problem. It takes the edge off basically. So I do, and I feel the same weight lifted off my shoulders of caring about the little things that make me anxious as when I have a few drinks or take a few hits of marijuana. Is that self-medication? I mean, I am the one deciding when I need it. It numbs my pain. And I can get addicted to this drug if I take it too often. It's the exact same thing if I have a drink every time I'm nervous.

Some people that are close to me actually encourage self-medication. My brother turned to me once while I was in high school and said, "Ya know, if you started smoking weed, you'd be so much happier and more chill" With my condition and the tragic stories of self-medication I had heard, alcohol and drugs scared the crap out of me. I knew that every person enjoyed experimenting with those things but I thought that if I had just tried something once I would become addicted because it would make my pain go away. Obviously, since then I have experimented and realized that I wouldn't become addicted immediately  Sometimes I have slipped up though. There have been times I caught myself smoking weed because I was anxious or drinking hard so that I became calm faster. I realize that every time I did that, the night ended horribly. Worse than if I would have done it out of pure entertainment and not a get away from my problems.

But that's all that medication is. A get away. A cheat. But the average person doesn't think that medication is a bad thing. People need what they need. There can be a million different types of medication to numb your problems but they will still be there. No medication can completely change who you are or what you have done to yourself. It will always just numb what is there already.

I don't self-medicate. But it depends on your point-of-view on what self-medication really is.

Trains, Pains, and Automatic Relapse

Honestly, the reason I haven't posted in weeks is because I've been better. The reason I'm posting now is because I'm not. That's what happens I guess.


In the weeks that I was better, I felt on top of the world. Suddenly everything was looking up. I thought I was getting a job and I wasn't freaked out about it. I wasn't anxious at all actually. I rode home on the trolley, which is usually a challenge. It was actually the only time during weeks past that I felt a little bit anxious.


I felt totally fine walking to the trolley. I had everything ready to go. Even waiting in the terminal was fine. That would usually be the part that I would get shaky at. Waiting. Waiting is always my weakness. When I have to wait for something, my mind starts going. I start thinking about the fact that I'm not panicked and what about the current situation would freak me out. Then I get freaked out. But waiting in the terminal I was fine. It was waiting on the actual train that gave me a moment of uncertainty. I was sitting by myself with my backpack on my lap and my duffle on the seat next to me. I leaned my head against the window and saw the blackness of the terminal outside. My eyes wondered to the sliding doors of the trolley. They were staying open for the late passengers to arrive. I thought about how when they closed I was stuck inside of the car until the next stop. There was no turning back. Stuck. My hands started to shake and my breathing got heavy. I then stopped the panic attack in its tracks. I closed my eyes and turned "Marching Band of Manhattan" by Death Cab for Cutie on my iPod. I turned the volume up very high and had a flow of memories to the song. The first time I heard it, my brother was driving me in my Dad's Mountaineer to my middle school during the summer. I was picking up my schedule and forms for the 8th grade. I fell in love with the song. My mind fast forwards to 6 months later. I have the album on my brand new iPod Nano that I got for Christmas that year. My friends and I are in the cafeteria trying to sneak listens so that the lunch proctors don't catch us with it. I tell my best friend Sarah to listen to "Marching Bands of Manhattan", she looks up at me and tells me it's awesome and she wants the CD. She then listens to a song called "What Sarah Said" off of the same album just because it has her name in it. Then I wonder what Sarah's doing right now, will I see her tonight when I go home? I then think about how that memory is 6 years old but is still fresh in my mind. I open my eyes. The doors close. The train starts moving. I'm calm. I repeat the song the whole train ride home. I stare out the window and watch the world go by as fast as I feel time does. Panic is gone.


All of that detail in a small attack that I got through. My attacks got worse when I went home this past week for Thanksgiving. Even though everything in the suburbs is still, I felt like it was moving so fast. I think that my biggest problem in life is that as often as I try to stop time, I feel it moving past as fast as it does on the train. Which makes me feel out of control. Like I'm riding down a steep hill on a bike, my brakes don't work, and I know I'm gonna crash. Times like on the train I find a way to roll into the grass and slow down, other times I face-plant on the pavement. 

Diary Entry #7: Overthinking

If I had a dime for how many times I get asked why I have panic attacks, I'd be a very rich person. Why? Why are you freaking out? Why are you sick? Why can't you come? Why? Why? Why?


I wish I knew why.


Surprisingly the person that asks me this the most is my own mother. Every time she asks me why, I tell her that she should know the answer. There is no reason. It just happens.


You can tell a lot about a person by the way they ask you what's wrong. People that are confident that they know you well enough will just tell you what is wrong with you - "You're freaking out because of the car.", "You're panicked aren't you?",  "You're problem is that you are thinking too much about everything. You just need to stop."


That last one is the closest thing I can come to as why. I think too much. But I can't help it. To be completely honest I remember when I started thinking. Well, I guess I should say I remember when I started deep thinking. I was 13 years old and lying on my couch in the middle of the summer. It was late afternoon and I was still in my pajamas. I was lying there, watching T.V. and I had this realization that I had no friends. Then I realized that was sad and I should be sad. That was when my depression first started. I went through a period where all I did was listen to sad music and stare at things. That's when the deep thinking I started got even deeper. 


I've been a loner my whole life. It's just the way I am. Being alone gives you a lot of time to think. Too much actually. I think about the future. I think about what's coming up that I'm going to freakout about. I get caught up in my daydreams so much that I forget what is reality. I always have some sort of alter-ego that I imagine myself being whenever I'm bored. Right now, its myself but I don't have panic and I am living in New York City working on the show 30 Rock. Just a city girl working hard. But that's just one of them. I have tons. I'm also a famous musician that grew up as a child-rockstar but just released a solo album that has Grammy potential. An artist/photographer in Paris that vacations all over Europe on the weekends with her beautiful boyfriend Jacques. But mostly, I'm just me - but without panic, really pretty and skinny, and happy.


I overthink things, which makes me have panic, but also makes me more creative. If I had the choice to be normal and not creative, I would take it in a heartbeat. Being creative is overrated, to those of you that are not. Most creativity strives in pain. You don't meet many happy artists. And if they are, they are hiding something. 


I can't help overthinking because I've done it for so long. Every once in a while I can turn it off, but it is hard. I have to give up being a loner so I don't have time to think. But I want to be alone so that won't work. It's such a vicious cycle I am in. Yes, I said cycle not circle. The world works in cycles.


I need a cigarette. When I smoke I think so I guess I need to think some more. And more and more. 


My friend decided that she discovered the meaning to life. It's that there is none. We are born with one truth - that someday we will in fact die. So live while you can. There's no point in trying to figure life out.


I think she's right. But I also think I've always believed that. That's why I don't think about philosophy. I think about stories and alter egos and music and movies. Oh and lines. I think about what people say a lot. That's why I'm a screenwriter.


I'm gonna go have that cigarette.




P.S.
Count how many times I wrote the word "think" in this. I bet it's a lot.

Diary Entry #6: The Flip-Side of Anxiety...Depression

When I was first diagnosed with this disorder, I was asked if I had ever felt depressed. I had. Oh, I had. From the summer before 8th grade, until right before my panic got bad sophomore year, I went through various stages of depression.


My doctor told me that this is common because anxiety and depression work in the same part of the brain. A normal person has balanced levels of both. They get nervous when they have a big presentation, they get depressed after a bad break-up. What is wrong with me and other people suffering from depression and anxiety is that those levels are not balanced naturally like everyone else. Or at least that is my understanding of it. I'm not a doctor.


I go through weeks of bad panic and anxiety but then I won't be anxious anymore. I'll say that I'm better when I'm not. It just flipped. I'm just depressed now instead of crazy. Depression can make people crazy but not in the same ways.


For example, I missed a test yesterday. If I was a normal person, I'd just be pissed at myself. But because of me being me, I thought this was the end of the world and I was suicidal for a good portion of the day. Now, today, I look at this and think "What? Are you insane? You wanted to kill yourself because of a test? Not Cool." But that's just the way my brain works. It's always drama with me. Which I guess is the reason I want to write films, but not dramatic ones, funny ones that people can watch and be rid of all the drama in their life.


But when I'm in a depression stage, nothing can make me happy. I watch comedies trying to feel better, but usually I think of some reason why they are sad. Once I was feeling lonely and sad while I was at school so I decided to watch the classic comedy "Stripes". I laughed but then I got sad that this is a movie I used to watch with my dad all the time when I was a little girl and now I'm not a little girl. And blah blah blah life is always moving forward and not backward and it makes us sad to notice that we are growing older towards our inevitable death.


Yeah, I get dramatic. 


So the point of this post is that sometimes people with bad depression get bad anxiety, and sometimes people with bad anxiety get bad depression. Because its really the same thing.

Diary Entry #5: Feelings of Dying

Ever since this all started, I've never thought I was dying. That's actually uncommon with the Panic Disorder thing. Usually the entire attack is people thinking that they are going to die, then they hyperventilate, and blah blah blah everything gets crazy. That's not what I get. I always figure people die when they die. There's nothing you can do about it. Instead, I get sick. Or I feel like I'm going to be sick which to me is as good as dying. I feel like being stuck somewhere and being sick is the absolutely worst and most embarrassing thing that can happen to someone. 


I was in New York City when I was 12. The Holiday Inn we were staying at had given us the wrong room. It was our second day in New York and we were leaving around 10 am and supposedly when we came back around 4 our new room would be ready. This scared me. I didn't have a place to go that was safe. So I went to the hotel lobby bathroom and started getting sick. I was really only dry-heaving and crying. I've always been dramatic. My mother was used to this routine. I always did this. So she just left me in the lobby bathroom in New York City while she went to the front desk to work out some things about the room. At some point a woman came into the bathroom and was really concerned. I mean, there's this 12 year old girl crying hysterically in a bathroom stall, choking herself to vomit - anyone would be concerned. Then she leaves and a hotel employee comes in and asks me if I need to go to the hospital. I'm 12 so I start yelling "No! No Hospital!" sobbing "I just need my mom! Janet Riley!". From what my mother told me, that hotel worker runs into a busy New York hotel lobby and calls a halt to everyone and yells "JANET RILEY COME HELP YOUR DAUGHTER IN THE WOMEN'S RESTROOM" and then my entire family laughs, so of course everyone around them is concerned about my home life. And now this is a funny story we tell at dinner parties.


But it's embarrassing. I was stuck in that bathroom. Just like I'm always stuck when it happens. When I was little it was better though, because my parents were my safe zone. If I was with my mom or dad, I would be okay no matter what. But then I went to college. That break of independence changed me. Now my parents don't calm me down. I'm not a little kid, if I'm like that in a hotel lobby bathroom - people are calling the cops. I'll end up in a mental facility and that will be my life. 


My parents were always there to protect me and now they aren't. So now when I feel sick, I think  "What if I am dying right now?" I think that no one would be there to see if I die or not. I actually think about if I died in my single dorm room, how long would it take for people to notice? I mean, I don't talk to my parents religiously everyday. I don't talk to anyone everyday like that. Maybe people would notice if I wasn't out on the stoop smoking cigarettes, but they would probably just assume that they keep missing me. So I realize that if I did die in my dorm room, people wouldn't know until my room started smelling rancid. Then I would be that person. That lonely person that is found by their smell. Not unlike the fat guy that lives in the apartment 3 doors down, or the old lady in the house with all her cats. But I'm not a lonely person. I'm lucky enough to have an enormous amount of people that love and care about me. (This differs me from a depressed person.) So I'm just afraid and anxious about the embarrassment of going that way. So now I'm afraid of dying. But only in my dorm room.

Diary Entry #4: CUT TO TODAY

Today, I am a sophomore. I have a single dorm room. I live a really easy lifestyle. But my panic attacks have been worse. Way worse. Previously, in this blog I've been talking in the past tense but why not blog right now while its happening.


It's 11 am. I have class at 11:20. I'm having panic attacks. No reason why, they are just happening. Suddenly the safe-haven of my single dorm has made me sheltered to now thinking that I don't have to leave my room. I'm becoming dangerously close to a hermit. I really can't tell you why I'm scared. I just get this tight "stuck" feeling whenever I think about class. Today it might be worse because I missed this class last week. Not due to a panic attack. Due to sleeping in. So now I guess I feel like there's no way in hell I can miss two classes in a row so I have to go. But telling myself I have to go is making me not want to. It makes me really scared that I'll fail the class. I'll lose my scholarship. And I will prove everyone right that didn't think I would amount to anything. It's one class but it has the pressure of my life on it. I hate pressure. I really do.


I didn't sleep last night, I had insomnia. Another symptom of my hell. I was awake until 8am and then I had panic attack on an elevator. Then I slept for 2 hours.


I feel like I'm having a heart attack. I feel nauseous, again. I could literally vomit at any second. I can't breathe. But the thing is I know that I can breathe, I just feel like I can't.


Right now I have to go into the classroom, and I will continue this post when I come out. Hopefully, when I do it's the actual time the class is over.


CUT TO: Sitting in my dorm room, days later.


So I didn't continue the post when I came out. I was sleep-deprived and I went directly to a nap after class. But the point is, I made it through class. I should say that I barely made it through that class. I wasn't have panic attacks, I was just 80% sure that I was asleep during that entire 3 hours.


I've realized that the cause of my insomnia was due to a medication I started taking. I stopped taking it and apparently I'm supposed to expect mood swings, panic attacks, and general "out-of-whack-ness". This is great. On top of being a basket-case in general, I have to deal with this shit. Tomorrow I have class again. And I am scared. I missed this class last week. But all I can do is breathe and try. My only other option is to sit in my dorm, become a hermit, and eventually die.


Maybe I'm being over-dramatic.

Diary Entry #3: A History of Being Scared: Part 3

There's always a silver lining. The summer between my sophomore year of high school and my junior year, I started getting better. I pushed myself to my limits and it worked. Every challenge I had got easier. It was always "You did that, so you can do this."


It started small. I pushed myself to go over my friend's house for a half an hour. Then an hour. Then a day. When I started my junior year, I was feeling good. I got a part time job. I had to work up the courage to do it. I started making lists to get myself through things. I would write down everything that I was afraid of happening. Then I would list all of the reasons those things were not scary. And I told myself if the list of reasons that it was scary was longer than why it was, then I would do it. It was always a longer list. 


Then Homecoming came, once again. I made a list, once again. I was going to go to pictures, ride in a car with my friend driving, go to dinner, go to the dance, and go to an after party. It was my biggest challenge yet. I remember waiting for my Dad to drive me to the pictures and holding this worn piece of paper with my lists on it. I was shaking the whole time. And I had a great time. I danced, I laughed, and I felt normal for the first time in my life. It was a beautiful night.


From that point on, High School was pretty easy. Especially, when I started driving and had my own car. I always had a way out. During junior year I started looking at colleges. The world wasn't big enough for me. I was afraid of anything. I wanted to go to school in different countries and continents. I never imagined going to college in my hometown. I was ready for a big change. Or at least I thought I was. 


I ended up picking a school that was 20 minutes from my house. It was because of the program and environment. It was perfect. 


The first time that panic hit me hard again was the day I had my in person interview to go there. I felt so professional. I woke up that morning, got dressed up, drove myself to the trolley, chain-smoked cigarettes, and just felt cool. It hit me while I was waiting for the trolley. I suddenly got scared. What was I doing? It was a very small panic attack that I shook off that day. I went to the interview and rocked it. But that small panic attack foreshadowed the next year of my life very well.


The next time it struck was when I was going to orientation. That was hell. I chickened out the first time I was going to go, but luckily the school had a second orientation. I went to that one. I was scared, on drugs (legally prescribed ones), and shaking the whole time. But I got through it. 


The next time was when I was going to move in. I honestly don't know how I did it. My diary entries from that day still make me shiver. But somehow I made it through.


The problem is that after I moved into college, the biggest change of my life, I thought that I would get better. I thought that panic all together would go away. But that whole "You did that, so you can do this." idea isn't real. Every challenge is a different challenge. It hurts just as much and it's just as hard. I was thinking before I went to college that if I could do that, I could do anything. But I was wrong. Everyday I wake up, I still have the same small challenges that I did when I was a sophomore in high school. It's just a matter of dealing with them or not. Living or not. I choose to live. So I choose to live with panic disorder and deal with it. Sometimes I deal with it well, sometimes I don't. But I breathe, and I live. So I guess that makes me a person.

Diary Entry #2: A History of Being Scared: Part 2

From that point when I was 7, until a second major point when I was 15, I was always known as the girl that got nervous and threw up. I went to doctors. They all told my parents that I just was a little bit more anxious than the rest of us, but I would grow out of it. Ha ha ha....

Every time I had any type of pressure on myself I would get scared and vomit. It was just my "thing".

CUT TO: The beginning of my sophomore year of high school.

My brother had just left for college. I moved into his old room. For some reason, this scared me. Suddenly I felt like my whole childhood had abruptly ended. I was now an "adult" in my mind.

Again, it was my first day of school. I had already gone to my high school for a year. There was nothing to be afraid of. But I felt different.

I got to school and I was shaking. I couldn't breathe. And again, I felt nausea. Insane nausea. I only made it to 4th period until I begged the school nurse to call my father to pick me up. 

I didn't go to school for the rest of the week. When I tried to go each day, something stopped me in my tracks. This time I was aware that I had no illness. I wasn't in any danger. I thought I was crazy. I had to be. Why else would this be happening?

Somehow, I finally adjusted to school. Then came the Homecoming dance. I remember going to get my dress and dreading the upcoming event. I finally sat my mother down in my room and said "Mom, this is bigger than butterflies. I'm crazy. I have a problem." She told me that everything would be okay. I made it to the dance with great difficulty. Then I had an appointment with a therapist.

It was a rainy day when I went to the therapist for the first time. It was on the side of a busy road next to a Sheetz. I saw nurses outside smoking cigarettes through my car window. I felt like I was being committed.

The waiting room was very circular and bland. There were really worn out children's books in the corner titled "The tales of Sad Sally" and "Angry Adam". The newest magazines were a year old. And then there was a wall of pamphlets. I find it weird that the Psychiatric Industry thinks that making a pamphlet about anger, depression, and anxiety will help people. It's just a bunch of random statistics and a diagram or two about god know's what. I swear that there is a pamphlet on anything that could be wrong with you.

After a few sessions with a therapist, I was referred to an actual psychiatrist. She prescribed me pills that were supposed to make me feel better but mostly just made me depressed. I have to say that eventually I stuck to a pill that made a microscopic difference in my ability to leave my house. But really my progression was made on my own. But that's another story.

The story of my sophomore year of high school is me laying in my bed, listening to depressing music on my Ipod. Talking to my best friend on the phone for an hour a day. Only leaving my house for school. And longing to either get better or kill myself.

It's not pretty, I know. But that's how it goes. What I've realized in my short 19 years, especially from this experience, is that you have to hit rock bottom to be able to climb back up. And you're gonna slip and fall back down after that for sure. But you have to hit rock bottom so that in the future you know that   wherever you fall, you can get back up.

Diary Entry #1: A History of Being Scared

I was seven and it was my first day of the second grade. I was just this little girl with brown hair in a pixie cut. I was wearing dark blue cargo shorts and a dark blue striped tank top. I always remember what I wore on my first days of school.
My elementary school was up the street and through the woods from my house. I was a "walker" because I was so close that the school district didn't waste money on sending a bus to my neighborhood.
Walking up my street that morning was the first time I remember being scared in a way that I have come to know way too well. 
What I was feeling was more than the normal first day of school butterflies. I couldn't breathe. I felt nausea to my core. All I wanted to do was go home. I didn't know why. This was my third year going to this school as a student but, since my mother was the PTA president, I had been going up there since I was about three.
The children in my class were mostly the same from the year before. My teacher was a good friend of my mother's that I was already very close with. I had no reason to be scared. But I was.
Anyone that has experienced panic or anxiety attacks will tell you that the first one you have is the most terrifying. That's because the victim doesn't know what is happening to them. 
But as a seven year old, I couldn't even comprehend that there was nothing wrong around me. I couldn't see that this was just an internal thing happening in my mind.
I got into school. We played a game to get to know each other as a class. I walked up to my teacher to ask her if I could use the bathroom. And I vomited all over her. 
It's okay, you can laugh. It's pretty funny. And it's also one of those stories that still gets retold at parties now, over a decade later. 
But it was the first time in my life that I was truly scared. Little did I know at the time that twelve years later I would be sitting in my college dorm room reflecting on it, realizing that it was my first panic attack.