Hey there old pal–
It’s actually ironically funny that I’m writing a letter to you now. I called you the Big Two, because for years the two of you destroyed my life in ways that started off miniscule and then spiraled into a new me that was far from optimal. It took a lot for me to get back to who I was before you set in and I did. For a few months.
I was permanently better, or at least I thought I was. For a solid four months, I had a grasp on the illness, or at least I thought I did. I was able to do what I loved again and find purpose in my school and social life. I saw the beauty of everyday things again, no matter how ordinary. My passion for activities was back in full swing. I went to student organizations again. I achieved a balance of managing schoolwork while not having stomach knots and anxiety attacks over something as miniscule as one C on an assignment. I learned to see life in the greater scheme of things and to not stress myself into a pit of anguish and false hopelessness. I still had the occasional depressed or anxiety-prone day. But I could handle it. Last semester, I was invincible. I was Superwoman. I thought I could be a success story, a message to those still struggling. I thought I was cured. Not exactly.
I don’t know what happened, but it’s all coming back to me now. I’m not invincible. I’m not Superwoman. I’m a girl who was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and major depression four years ago. I’m a girl who had a break, a semester abroad, so to speak, from the confines of her illness for a few months. It happens. It was temporary relief. But it’s not reality.
There is never one particular trigger or single moment that will “cause” one’s anxiety or depression. There is never one analogy or one way to point a finger and say “that. That is why I’m sick.” I wish there was. I wish I could point a finger and identify the source of my anxiety and depression. I wish I could hunt it down, tackle it to the ground, and overcome it. I wish I could understand what the hell I did to deserve my own brain betraying me, what I did to deserve all the nights I cried and shuddered myself to sleep. All the stomach knots and unhealthy, rapid heartbeats. All the days I slept my life away in depression’s peril and snide grip, all the times I literally got on my knees and prayed for a God, any God, out there to help me, to make it all stop. All the days where it never did.
I want to know why every single little thing terrifies me. There has to be a reason why I can’t walk to my classes without feeling like everyone is staring and judging me, as if seeing into everything I’m trying to bury in my mind. I want to know why I can’t get through one assignment without biting my nails, clenching my teeth together, mind racing in irrational horror of failing. And don’t get me started on the days where I can’t get out of bed, where I’m so lethargic and numb that the minute I wake up I physically cannot bring myself to move, undergoing literal paralysis. Don’t get me started on the days where I bawl for no identifiable reason or when I look at myself in the mirror and loathe my reflection, and everything about myself.
Frankly, I don’t deserve any of this. I don’t deserve to feel like a ghost in my own body. I don’t deserve the people closest to me taking one look at my situation and deciding to strut out of my life without so little as a backwards glance or reconsideration. I don’t deserve to feel like a burden or to have people tap their feet waiting for me to “snap out of it” I wish I could. I’m tired of being told to “smile more” and “worry less”. I’m tired of hearing “shut up and take a Xanax” and “what do you possibly have to complain about?” from people who somehow have it in their heads that their problems are to be deemed infinitely more legitimate than another’s.
Thank you for making me live as a tainted reflection of myself. People claim that I’m not who I see in the mirror, that I am not you. But I feel like I am you. I don’t know how I can beat this. I don’t think there is a cure. There are periods of calm that are just as rapidly overtaken by waves of chronic trauma.
I would love to “just get better.” I would love for “everything to be okay”. But I’m not naïve, and I’ve learned not to expect miracles. Unfortunately, there are no “cures”, just temporary treatments and/or times where the illness is mostly dormant. I will have to keep trying to deal with you and not expect that you will leave. You won’t. I will just have to continue fighting within the confines of my troubled mind.
Sincerely,
One whose life you’ve irreparably damaged