The First Year of College With Anxiety Disorder
One Experience
By the time I reached the end of my senior year in high school, I thought I was finally together. I thought I was finally ready. I thought, as many high school seniors do, that this was where my life would become my own and start changing for the better. I had found peace in certain areas of my personal life that I had struggled with all throughout high school, I fell in love with a boy who I thought would be there for me for the rest of my life, and I had cut out the people in my life who brought me anything other than happiness (at least at the time.)
I was happy, relieved, and most importantly, excited. However, as summer drew closer to an end, the familiar sensation of panic grew in my chest. From the time I was in kindergarten there had been a low thrum of fear inside of me, always there, always lurking in the shadows when I wanted to try something new, always rearing its head when things were overwhelming. I had learned to live with it, manage it, and in some small ways overcome it.
That's the thing about mental illness though, even when you learn to manage it, it will adapt and change with your life.
In some ways, I let that panic get the best of me. I let the anxiety tell me that I would never hear from my best friends again, I let it tell me that my relationship would fall apart, I let it tell me that my family wouldn't make it once I was gone. I didn't tell anyone that though. I just let it tear me up inside.
Once I moved in, things only got worse. I didn't believe that the people around me wanted to be around me, none of the friendships I was forming felt real, and I felt more alone than I ever had before. I spent countless hours crying in my parked car to hide from my roommate, hyperventilating in the shower, and hiding in bathroom stalls when I felt a panic attack coming.
The panic attacks, I once knew how to breathe through and control with mindfulness techniques and other endless coping mechanisms, were a completely different beast. I could be alone in the library or a quiet corner of the dining hall just trying to study and then suddenly, like a wave of icy water, fear would hit me.
I tried to seek comfort from my boyfriend, but I've learned its a lot easier for someone to claim they will be there for you when you don't actually need them. My relationship was crumbling. I still don't know when it started, if the sinking feeling in my stomach was part of the problem or if it was simply a side effect of losing someone I truly loved. Everything else aside, he couldn't be there for me when I needed him to be. Not even a little bit. And the end of the relationship brought new pain, new struggles, and new fear.
Finally, I called my mom and we made an appointment to see a doctor about anti-anxiety medication, something I spent the majority of my high school years in counseling trying to avoid. But college was and is a major change that I needed help with. I talked to my friends, I started taking medication, I went to see a counselor at school (not the best, but it helped), I found a group of people that seemed to want to embrace me, and, most importantly, I let them.
I realized that there were people around me ready to meet me, the real me, and I just hadn't been myself. I let them in, I let myself cry, and I began figuring out who I was in this new little world. I built a home for myself, the panic attacks became fewer and further apart, I could handle my days again.
The breakup still hurt, that's an entirely different story, but I realized I wasn't alone and the paranoia that everyone around me was going to disappear, was nothing more than paranoia.
I am stronger now than I was when I graduated from high school. I am so much happier. I am in love with the world, my home, and my self. I am living with an anxiety disorder, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm living.
Comments
There are no comments for this story
Be the first to respond and start the conversation.