a constant
excerpt from WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HAVE SEVERE ANXIETY
Jacklyn Krol
You can’t wrap your mind around severe anxiety unless you’ve been through it. I wish people would take it more seriously. But explaining something you feel is hard. How do you capture the real essence of what’s going through your mind and body? Feeling an [anxiety] attack is one of the strangest sensations I’ve ever felt. You literally feel like your body is going to simultaneously collapse and explode. I experience weakness, stomach sickness, dizziness, tremors, breathing difficulty, heart palpitations, and fear that it can and most likely will get worse. My attacks come randomly, usually with no trigger. What’s bad about my anxiety is the fact that seizures, breathing problems, and heart problems have started to coincide with them, adding a level of fear you couldn’t imagine.
Still, even though my anxiety disorder is very real, and not just misplaced fear, I won’t let it define who I am.
excerpt from I AM NOT SOME BROKEN THING
Michael Hedrick
In my seven years of living with schizophrenia, one thing that keeps coming up, the thing I spend my time trying to rationalize away is
For a long time I tried fighting against the delusions of criticism by acting the way I thought I was supposed to act. I maintained a script of verbal and non-verbal communication that I thought would dispel the things they were making fun of me about. For some unknown reason though, the fakery was obvious no matter how hard I tried to act the right way which lent even more credibility to the rumors and accusations I thought I could hear them saying right outside of earshot or the laughter behind my back. Call it a serious ego trip when you perceive that the entire world is watching you and worse, making fun of you. I believed it though.
Schizophrenia is not a death sentence if you don’t let it become one. I’m a living testament to that.
excerpt from WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE MANIC
Gaby Dunn
I think: I have to write this essay or read this book or clean my drawers out or oh god, what if I wrote a musical? What if I started a Tumblr with pictures of dolphins in sunglasses? Why don’t I have an article up on McSweeney’s? I could do that! Why don’t I have a new show at the comedy theater? I could make that happen! I should do it right now. At 1 a.m. on a Tuesday. I should go to grad school for biology! I should apply to be a Fulbright scholar! I should move to Beijing! Let me Google all those things. Then it’s three hours later and I’ve learned a few phrases in Mandarin and looked up good science graduate programs and bought a book on eBay about musical writing and none of this is actually useful. I’ve just made myself crazy with expectations and self-imposed “musts.”
When I am manic, I am also a flirt. I see everyone as a potential sexual partner. I wrap my self-worth in whether or not I can get someone to flirt back. I put all my (literal) eggs into getting someone’s (anyone’s) attention. When I am manic, I want to be wanted. In college, I was put on medication for this condition that made me have a hysterical, tearful panic attack on an airplane. That is also part of being manic. There’s the downside. The swing back. The pendulum coming back around to immense sadness and lack of hope. I’ve laid under my covers for four days in the dark, until my mom sent my ex to come drag me out of bed. I’ve hidden out in my brother’s suburban house for a week, a weird ghost in pajamas lurking his hallways, unresponsive. I’m PRODUCTIVE and then I am numb.
If I could choose not to be manic, would I?
excerpt from DEPRESSION DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOUR LIFE LOOKS LIKE ON PAPER
Angele Maraj
I hated feeling sorry for myself. As far as logic could tell me, I had no reason to feel sorry for myself. I was smart; I was talented; I was successful and had friends. My parents may have had their own issues, but I knew they loved me with all their hearts. I was not a victim of any abuse, I had not really been bullied and I had an ostensibly bright future ahead of me…if I could manage to make it that far. When I thought about life, when I wrote it down on paper, I liked it. I wanted more of it. But see, that’s the thing — depression doesn’t care what life looks like on paper. It doesn’t give a damn about what you tell yourself about how great life is and could be.
And that is something that took me a long time to understand and an even longer time to talk about.
The thing is, it doesn’t get better; rather, if you’re resourceful and determined and lucky, you get better at handling it.
Mental illness is a very powerful thing. If it is with you it is probably going to be there until the day you die. I am trying so hard to break mine, but it is not easy. It is my toughest fight ever. –Frank Bruno
ARTICLES Krol, Jacklyn. “What It’s Like to Have Severe Anxiety.” ThoughtCatalog.com. N.p., 14 Jan. 2014. Web. Hendrick, Michael. “I Am Not Some Broken Thing.” ThoughtCatalog.com. N.p., 10 May 2013. Web. Dunn, Gaby. “What It’s Like to Be Manic.” ThoughtCatalog.com. N.p., 7 Aug. 2012. Web. Maraj, Angele. “Depression Doesn’t Care About What Your Life Looks Like on Paper.” ThoughtCatalog.com. N.p., 12 Feb. 2014. Web.
PHOTOS All photos from flickr.com Cover: P9050039 by rakewellcharlie; Anxiety: Anxiety by mathewchrisodoulou; Schizophrenia: Full body view of young woman with long hair sleeping in bed by marlene_ ford_photography; Manic: ; Depression: Depression by RebeccaLynnPhotography8