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.