To say that suffering with panic attacks and severe anxiety is a depressing handful would be a bit of an understatement. Now that I am almost 25, it seems unreal to think that I have been carrying around this burden for nearly 10 years. While panic attacks don't just occur randomly, but are rather triggered from some deep rooted stressor, my first attack happened at the young age of 16 in 2006 at what seemed like the most random time of my life. Mid high school, just at the height of my volleyball career. Very odd timing to me. Granted, some pretty tremendous and traumatic incidences did happen in years prior, but I never thought that those traumas would physically manifest themselves into the panic and anxiety that has so severely plagued me.
Well here I am at the beginning of 2015, almost ten years later, still trying to overcome the mental inmate that has decided to set up camp deep within the neural pathways of my brain. Who am I to complain. Millions of people suffer with depression and anxiety everyday at some point in their life, but only few of us suffer from the chronic condition in which the depression and anxiety decides to constantly come back and plague us with its existence. Major depressive disorder is a hard burden to bare. Going through depression once is annoying enough, but its continual return into my life is unfathomable. I still don't understand it and maybe I never will.
All I know is I have been through the ringer with this mental health disorder quite a few times. The worst being fall/winter of 2012. That was when the panic attacks were at their highest and my depression was at its lowest. Sure I was having a third knee surgery and it was my last semester of college, but life itself was never bad. In fact, my life never really has been bad. Sure I have had career ending injuries from volleyball and I have lost far too many loved ones than anyone should have to endure by their early twenties, but those things aside, God has blessed me with a wonderful life. That is why when these depressing symptoms return, it is so frustrating.
A chemical imbalance. Sure, its nice to have a cause for the problem, but its frustrating when the only thing you can do to control it is pop a daily pill. And if you didn't already know, finding the right antidepressant and the right milligram is no walk in the park. Not to mention the wonderful side affects of weight gain, insomnia, extreme fatigue and a million other things. After numerous failed attempts, I have found my balance. But like any physical disease, mental diseases have their good days and bad days too. On the good days you feel so alive and free you forget what its like to struggle. And on the bad, you feel like you will never have a good day again.
So every New Year I promise myself that I will not let this disorder control me and every year I remember that I can't always control things that happen. So I decided to promise myself something else this year. I am plagued with reoccurring depression and anxiety that sometimes manifests itself into panic attacks. I cannot control that. What I can control is how I let it affect me and the people I love. I can't succumb to the negative that the anxiety has brought me, but rather look towards the positive. This will not kill me. I am not alone in this and I never will be. I have already survived so much, and I know I can survive so much more.
