Don't leave!

Mental illness is definitely a journey of ups and downs, successes and failures, joy and heartache. I often heard that people with mental illness get on medication, feel better and so decide to go off the medications and relapse. I never understood that. Why would someone go off the medications that were making them feel well?
Now I understand. First of all, most medications have side effects and sometimes those side effects can seem worse than the original problem. Second, at least in my case, once I started to feel better, I forgot how bad things were in the beginning, in my pre-medication days. I knew I became suicidal, but I thought that might have been due to circumstances, or hormones, or other such things. I forgot what it was like to live with a fog in my head most of the time. I forgot what it was like to not be able to take myself seriously. I forgot what it was like to strain my friendships to the point that some of them broke because I was not a healthy, functional friend.
I suffer from depression and anxiety. I have all of my adult life and have finally realized that this is due in large part to a chemical imbalance in my brain. I was put on medication and started doing much better. I am weaning off the medication and struggling again immensely. Why wean off then? In my case, it's because the side effects of the medication I was on (Effexor) at the doses I needed were not something I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. I am weaning off Effexor and trying Pristiq instead. We shall see what happens with that. I am hoping and praying for good results.
To those of you who are reading this who are my friends and my family, those of you who are walking beside me through this, I know it's a drag. I know it stinks when I always need you, when day after day after day after day, I call or text you in tears. I know it can be burdensome when I'm constantly asking for prayers, but I need you right now. There will come a time when I will be back on my feet and I will be able to be there for you. If the medicine works as we hope, that will only be a couple weeks from now. But today, I'm sick. I know that the texts/emails/facebook posts may seem like attention seeking and maybe sometimes they are, but to be honest, I put them out because I'm scared. It's dark in here, in my head, and I need you to tell me that it's going to be ok. I need you to remind me that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I need to know, repeatedly, time after time after time, that when I get to the end of the tunnel and the light is shining again, I won't be standing there alone because you are willing to stick through this with me.
I don't like me right now. I don't like living in this head of mine and trust me when I say that if I could change it, I would. But I can't. There is nothing I can do to speed up this process. So please, stick by me. Understand that the real me, the healthy me will be back and please don't leave.

Panic attack

I had my first public panic attack today. What a humiliating experience! I've had MANY panic attacks over the course of my life, but none of them have been in a public setting. I have always been at home or in my car, alone or with Jason. But today, I had no such luck. And the crazy part about it was that I totally didn't see it coming. It took me completely by surprise. I was cheering, laughing, having a great time at the softball game after church and the next thing I knew, the tremors in my hands started. That wasn't that big of a deal to me. I have had a lot of tremors in my hands over the last month. But the odd thing was that this time, instead of calming down, they got stronger and stronger. My arms started to shake, and then my head. I laid down on the blanket to try to calm down and curled into a ball, but I couldn't stop the shaking. Bree, a twelve year old girl who's like a daughter to me, drew the attention of my friend Sonja. I could hear Bree calling Sonja, but I couldn't respond. I couldn't make myself move. I just laid there. Sonja drew close to me and I started to cry. She told me to stop crying, that it would only make it worse, but I just wanted to weep. I was scared, terrified really because I couldn't understand what was happening. Nothing had taken place, or so I thought at the time, to trigger this. It didn't make sense. Sonja tried to get me to drink some water, but my hands were shaking so hard I couldn't get the cup to my lips.
The softball game ended right then. Even though I was in the middle of a panic attack, I knew enough to realize that everyone was going to by heading my direction, since I was sitting where we pray after the game. I told Sonja I needed to get out of there and tried to walk away. I made it a few feet then sunk to the ground and started to weep. Sonja called Jason to let him know what was going on and put the phone to my ear. I had Jason talking to me on the phone, people talking and praying all around me and I gradually calmed down enough to be able to speak. Jason said he was heading back to the park and we hung up. My panic attack was over, and the humiliation set in. I could hear someone trying to reassure James and Gabby that I was ok, and I felt terrible that my kids saw me that way. I felt terrible because I knew they were worried, and kept asking why Mommy was shaking, but there was nothing I could do to change what they had just witnessed. And I knew Bree was shook up and even though I knew that nearly every person there loves me healthy or ill, I was incredibly embarrassed to have completely lost control in front of so many people.
We headed back to the car and I started helping a friend unload some boxes out of my car and into hers when the shaking started again and again, I couldn't stop it. Sonja held me for awhile, then my friend Stephanie and then Dean. And as Dean held me, I continued to shake and I was sobbing uncontrollably. I said: "I'm scared! I'm soooo scared!" "Scared of what?" Dean said. "Scared of this! I don't understand this! What is going on?!" Dean didn't have an answer for me, and Jason arrived. Jason gathered me in his arms and I wept and wept and wept some more. And then I started talking. And as I talked, I realized that a fight that had gone down right next to me that morning at the park had shook me up way more than I realized, as well as three other fights that went down that day, a group of rowdy twenty-somethings and events over the last four days had all led to my breaking point.
What I still find most interesting in all of this, however, is the final trigger for the panic attack. It was nothing. It was so small and insignificant that I NEVER would have thought I would have had the reaction I had to it. I suppose you could say it was truly the straw that broke the camel's back. I had been trying to play a joke on a friend and play a MOO over the microphone while he was up to bat, but I couldn't get my phone to work properly. No big deal at all, but apparently the frustration of that, combined with everything else up to that point, led to a massive panic attack.
*sigh* Can I dig a great big hole and hide in it until I get this insanity under control? I feel so insecure right now. So embarrassed. The funny thing is I know my true friends will love me just the same and will stick by me, but it is the others that worry me. It is the ones that used to look up to me because they thought I was a great Christian lady who had it all together. Well, I don't. And rationally I know that if they can't love me hurting and broken, their love wasn't genuine to begin with, but emotionally, I'm scared to lose yet another fantasy, yet another friendship that I thought was more than it was.