The Closure Generalized Anxiety Disorder Gave Me

The entirety of my childhood, I had this nagging feeling sitting at the edge of my brain. It started small, almost unnoticeable, like a papercut almost. I could easily ignore it and go about my day, but at the end of the day it was still surely there. However, the more time passed, it didn't heal up or go away, it just continued to get worse. What started as slight nervousness and restlessness had fully evolved to an impending sense of doom that came to control every aspect of my life. At the drop of a needle, I would be having a full-blown meltdown about things as small as ordering dinner in the drive-thru. But at the time, I never realized that this was anything but normal. My parents had always told me that it was okay to worry a little, or feel nervous, or feel restless, and so forth. Every time I brought up this feeling to try and find answers, I was given the same script of answers every time: "...it's all in your head..." or "...you're overreacting..." or "...just get over it..." or "...it'll pass..." So I coped. I made it day to day, even with this feeling dragging me down with the iron grip it had on me.

Well after over 15 years (that I can remember) of coping, something snapped. After graduating high school as an academic honor student, being accepted into the college of my choice, having a long-term relationship, great friendships, and having everything going my way, something inside me just finally gave out. The last support beam had given out and the tunnel began to collapse. By the end of the first semester, every coping method I had to hold off the feeling was useless. However on top of everything good, I became depressed. And of course, this fed into the feeling because now I felt like I had failed my family's expectations of me. I ultimately made the decision to move back two and a half hours across the stateline to my hometown and try to get it all together. This did not go as planned. Unintentionally, I ended up pushing everyone I knew and even loved away from me. Every hobby that I loved faded away. My online college work had come to a complete stop. I couldn't focus anymore. This feeling consumed me and pushed these never-ending thoughts into my head. They used to feel like a stream trickling down, but now it was a catastrophe as the damn had busted and it flooded and were dead set on drowning me. It was only a matter of time at this point that my mental anguish had started to spread to something more. I couldn't sleep, my body constantly ached, I had headaches almost daily, and my stomach was always upset. The feeling of an impending sense of doom had become an overcast sky in my life. Looming darkness everywhere.

After eight long months, I had reached the end of my rope. I felt isolated, alone, worthless, and I couldn't handle the feeling anymore. What was it? Why did it have this grip on my life? Why did it hurt so bad? I wanted to give up. This time it was different though. It wasn't like every other time I had ever wanted to give up on something. It wasn't some sport I wanted to quit or an essay I wanted to hurry up and finish. I just wanted it to end, one way or another, permanently. I had cried for days trying to think of some way for it to stop. I decided that I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't see any other way out of this mess. Now this, this is not an easy decision to come to. In fact, it's extremely difficult and painful to come to. At this point, my significant other at the time noticed something was obviously incredibly wrong. He didn't know the full degree of what all was going on in my head and what I was feeling, but he suggested that maybe it was time to get help. I didn't have to do this alone. Reluctantly, as a last resort, I agreed.

We found a local place and made an appointment for 9 in the morning on a Wednesday. So of course, as the over-thinker that I am, I was up at 3 AM to ensure I had enough time to mentally prepare myself. I was worried that they would tell me the same thing everyone else had ever told me, "It's all in your head." The feeling was pushing these thoughts into my mind, telling it would just make it all worse if I told someone about it. Would they think I'm crazy? I almost bailed, but I went to the appointment anyways, knowing that it couldn't get any worse. After an hour of being poked and prodded with every question in the book, she told me that it wasn't all in my head. That something, in fact, wasn't quite right. She said that I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Anxious Depression and that the "feeling of impending sense of doom" was exactly that. She scheduled me for a series of follow-up appointments to come up with a treatment plan to try and at least get me to a point we could work with.

The first thing I did when I got home was pour myself into research. I had taken General Psychology in college so I knew what it was, but of course I needed to know more. So I read everything I could find, scouring the internet through a million different open tabs. It started with definitions and statistics and eventually led to TED talks, blogs, and social media accounts. It's nice to look at everything from a strictly scientific view, but it was comforting to know that I was not the only one living this way. These people talked about a variety of mental health problems and how they lived with them, everything from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder, from severe types of depression to eating disorders, and so much more. It was a whole community of people breaking down the stigma and saying "We aren't okay, but in the end, it'll be okay." Knowing that I wasn't alone, was in a sense, comforting. It made me feel less isolated.

This was ultimately what I found to be my turning point. I went to therapy and took my meds. The impending sense of doom became manageable. It was still there and I still had my bad days every now and then, but it wasn't the same anymore. I could breathe. So I repaired the bridges that had burned down and reached back out to my friends and family, most of which had not heard from me in half a year. Which as a chatterbox, is very unusual and freaked most of them out. I remember visiting my dad and genuinely crying because I felt as is I had disappointed him by getting help. Almost as if something was wrong with me because of it. But he told me that it was okay. He told me that I had always been that way, even as a very young child and that he didn't want me to feel like I was broken just because my brain was hardwired differently. And before I went home for the evening, he told me that he wished he knew had bad it was and that I had gotten help sooner, but in the end it was okay because I got the help I needed. And knowing that I had my parent's and my friend's support, made my journey a whole lot easier. Because even if they couldn't feel what I felt and know what I know, they wanted to understand it and help the best they could. Even if it meant on my dark days, they'd call to check in or just come over and sit in silence with me so I wouldn't be alone.

I never thought that what could be seen as another label would give me a much-needed answer. An answer to a question that I didn't even realize I was asking for the longest time. This was my closure. After almost two decades of feeling completely suffocated, I feel okay now. The darkness has receded and the sun is shining through the dissipating overcast sky. It will be okay. Maybe not in the foreseeable future, but it is coming.