davidthegnome
28-03-14, 04:34
Hello everyone. It's been some years since I last posted here, to some extent I think I have hidden from places that reminded me of the intense anxiety I used to struggle with every day. Well, as it does for so many of us, it has come back. The panic attacks, the general "free floating" stuff, and all the really wonderful stuff that comes with it. I always expected that it would one day, as every few years, something triggers that switch in my mind. Not sure what did it this time. I don't even want to guess. But I wanted to share some of my thoughts so people can hopefully tell me I'm not a lunatic or an over-dramatic buffoon....
(I apologize in advance for my long winded style of writing - or ranting, I guess you could call it)
So, it was a really long night at work tonight - slow, which gives me a whole lot of time to do what I already spend way too much time doing - thinking. I was thinking about my life as a younger man, my teen years, and what they were like. It occurred to me that there came a time when most of the "magic" just sort of vanished from my life. There are things you can experience, suffer through, that make the world forever a darker place.
For me, I think I was almost seventeen when things changed. I went out to a party, for the first time - and got ridiculously drunk for the first time, all in one night. There were things I never spoke of, not to anyone, things I kept so tightly hidden and locked up inside of me that wild horses could never have dragged them out. Yet that night, for perhaps the first time in my life, I truly lost control, I lost all inhibitions and spoke my mind (drunken, idiotic mind that it was at the time) with barely a thought - other than the sense that something was wrong with me and that I had to watch what I said.
Had it been just the alcohol, perhaps I would have slept it off, and woke up with nothing worse than a hangover. Yet I also smoked marijuana for the first time that night - which I guess can do some funny things to someone taking zoloft.
I had my first panic attack the next morning. I had no idea what it was - only the vague notion that I had somehow, suddenly gone stark, raving mad. I remember cowering in my room, with some nameless fear occupying my mind. Some sense that I was suddenly... different. I didn't have a name for the feelings I experienced. I couldn't read a sentence in a book - and those who know me know how much I love reading. But suddenly I could neither read nor write, I couldn't even focus on a television screen to lose myself in a movie. My nerves were shot, my focus was obliterated - and I found myself afraid of things as simple as tooth paste.
It was like that for the next three months - nothing I did brought comfort. I couldn't sit still, I couldn't stand still, I barely slept and ate only enough to keep me alive. I lost perhaps thirty pounds, and became so agoraphobic that I didn't dare go outside my room unless forced, or outside my home unless someone practically dragged me.
What I was experiencing (though I didn't know it at the time) was a state of acute, or "chronic" anxiety. It was not madness, as I had once thought, but a paranoia, a fear, a pain - a suffering in a form that millions of people all over the world experience to one degree or another. Yet, for the longest time, not knowing what it was, I hid away from the world in fear that I was insane.
Now I am nearing thirty - and I have had a very bumpy road through life. Many ups and downs. I've held all kinds of jobs, I've had the pleasure of falling in love a time or two, I've seen many places and known many people. How can I sum up so much life with just a few paragraphs? I suppose I can't, but that's never stopped me from trying - or from being long winded, for that matter.
My point is that, before that time, way back when... it was easier to lose myself in adventure. It was far more pleasurable to spend my time enjoying the company of loved ones, or even doing something as simple as playing a game or reading a book. I have added many scars to my mind and to my heart since then, and I wonder if, at some point, it will ever be possible that I can say: "I am better. I am myself again. Truly myself."
There are days when happiness seems not just elusive, but damned near impossible. For, no matter what circumstance or grand happening I can imagine, I cannot imagine myself ever being... light-hearted. I cannot imagine myself ever being care-free, or happy go lucky, or even simply content.
Can I ever go back to being fifteen or sixteen (at least, in state of mind)? Can I relive the time when I shared my first kiss under the stars with the first woman I loved? Will it ever be possible to rediscover, to regain that... sense of wonder that I had as a very young man? I don't know. I guess that's why I'm sharing this here.
I have long suspected that there is something simply broken inside of me. That I do not function as other people do, neither emotionally, not intellectually, nor even spiritually. The overall length and severity of this anxiety I have suffered with makes me doubt all things - even the God that, as a child, I had no trouble believing in.
Perhaps what it comes down to is simply that I have changed. What happened, happened. There is no way to change the past, to remove the hideous scars or to hide the ugliness that lurks within me. Perhaps then, my best option is to accept that this is so, and to find what measure of happiness or contentment I can, knowing that it will never be what it once might have.
I guess I'm hoping for someone to tell me that I'm wrong. Perhaps there is still something of a gullible child within me, looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - or at least a leprechaun. Does anyone feel that it is possible to really and truly heal severe emotional wounds that have festered for years? I'm hoping that it is. But I'm uncertain... so, I'm hoping someone has some insight. The anxiety is terrible, but it would be much easier to live with if I had some hope of real light at the end of the tunnel.
Thanks for reading my long rant.
(I apologize in advance for my long winded style of writing - or ranting, I guess you could call it)
So, it was a really long night at work tonight - slow, which gives me a whole lot of time to do what I already spend way too much time doing - thinking. I was thinking about my life as a younger man, my teen years, and what they were like. It occurred to me that there came a time when most of the "magic" just sort of vanished from my life. There are things you can experience, suffer through, that make the world forever a darker place.
For me, I think I was almost seventeen when things changed. I went out to a party, for the first time - and got ridiculously drunk for the first time, all in one night. There were things I never spoke of, not to anyone, things I kept so tightly hidden and locked up inside of me that wild horses could never have dragged them out. Yet that night, for perhaps the first time in my life, I truly lost control, I lost all inhibitions and spoke my mind (drunken, idiotic mind that it was at the time) with barely a thought - other than the sense that something was wrong with me and that I had to watch what I said.
Had it been just the alcohol, perhaps I would have slept it off, and woke up with nothing worse than a hangover. Yet I also smoked marijuana for the first time that night - which I guess can do some funny things to someone taking zoloft.
I had my first panic attack the next morning. I had no idea what it was - only the vague notion that I had somehow, suddenly gone stark, raving mad. I remember cowering in my room, with some nameless fear occupying my mind. Some sense that I was suddenly... different. I didn't have a name for the feelings I experienced. I couldn't read a sentence in a book - and those who know me know how much I love reading. But suddenly I could neither read nor write, I couldn't even focus on a television screen to lose myself in a movie. My nerves were shot, my focus was obliterated - and I found myself afraid of things as simple as tooth paste.
It was like that for the next three months - nothing I did brought comfort. I couldn't sit still, I couldn't stand still, I barely slept and ate only enough to keep me alive. I lost perhaps thirty pounds, and became so agoraphobic that I didn't dare go outside my room unless forced, or outside my home unless someone practically dragged me.
What I was experiencing (though I didn't know it at the time) was a state of acute, or "chronic" anxiety. It was not madness, as I had once thought, but a paranoia, a fear, a pain - a suffering in a form that millions of people all over the world experience to one degree or another. Yet, for the longest time, not knowing what it was, I hid away from the world in fear that I was insane.
Now I am nearing thirty - and I have had a very bumpy road through life. Many ups and downs. I've held all kinds of jobs, I've had the pleasure of falling in love a time or two, I've seen many places and known many people. How can I sum up so much life with just a few paragraphs? I suppose I can't, but that's never stopped me from trying - or from being long winded, for that matter.
My point is that, before that time, way back when... it was easier to lose myself in adventure. It was far more pleasurable to spend my time enjoying the company of loved ones, or even doing something as simple as playing a game or reading a book. I have added many scars to my mind and to my heart since then, and I wonder if, at some point, it will ever be possible that I can say: "I am better. I am myself again. Truly myself."
There are days when happiness seems not just elusive, but damned near impossible. For, no matter what circumstance or grand happening I can imagine, I cannot imagine myself ever being... light-hearted. I cannot imagine myself ever being care-free, or happy go lucky, or even simply content.
Can I ever go back to being fifteen or sixteen (at least, in state of mind)? Can I relive the time when I shared my first kiss under the stars with the first woman I loved? Will it ever be possible to rediscover, to regain that... sense of wonder that I had as a very young man? I don't know. I guess that's why I'm sharing this here.
I have long suspected that there is something simply broken inside of me. That I do not function as other people do, neither emotionally, not intellectually, nor even spiritually. The overall length and severity of this anxiety I have suffered with makes me doubt all things - even the God that, as a child, I had no trouble believing in.
Perhaps what it comes down to is simply that I have changed. What happened, happened. There is no way to change the past, to remove the hideous scars or to hide the ugliness that lurks within me. Perhaps then, my best option is to accept that this is so, and to find what measure of happiness or contentment I can, knowing that it will never be what it once might have.
I guess I'm hoping for someone to tell me that I'm wrong. Perhaps there is still something of a gullible child within me, looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - or at least a leprechaun. Does anyone feel that it is possible to really and truly heal severe emotional wounds that have festered for years? I'm hoping that it is. But I'm uncertain... so, I'm hoping someone has some insight. The anxiety is terrible, but it would be much easier to live with if I had some hope of real light at the end of the tunnel.
Thanks for reading my long rant.