New to Anxiety
I cried and threw up for hours, and shook violently until I fell asleep.
This is me, as I was. I did not experience stress, stressful moments, yes but stressing out or living in stress no. I never experienced anxiety. I did not used to manifest stress or anxiety in an physical way. People always said “identify what is stressful in your life and try to reduce it”, I was never able to identify a recurring thing that stressed me out. I’ve met many people with extreme anxiety, a lot of my friends take anxiety meds and have described their feelings of anxiety. I always believed them, and I knew how incredibly inhibiting anxiety to could be to someone’s life; however, I had never experienced, even an ounce, on anxiety. If you know me personally, you know that I don’t cry. However, I’ve always been good at telling people what’s happening, if I have a “warning”. “Heads up I have a headache, I might be an asshole”, “I feel sad, I don’t know why”. Usually I follow these statements up with “I don’t want to talk about it”.
Now, I have had 4 solid panic attacks, out of nowhere. My mom, a medical professional, tells me that “of course you’ve had panic attacks, this shit is insane”, meaning the pandemic, her emergency surgery and dealing with it all, alone with my two younger sisters. To me those don’t seem like valid reasons for me to all of a sudden have panic attacks, I’ve been through so much bullshit so why is it starting now!
After 9/11 a lot of young kids in New York City started having asthma attack out of the blue, due to all the smoke in the air. I was one of these kids, I had the one asthma attack, and then never again. Sometimes, though, it feels like I have a small cotton ball in my throat. Not like I’m going to cry, not like I can’t breathe, it just feels like when your breathing under the covers. But now since the pandemic every time I have that little cotton ball my head starts spinning. It’s so weird, I’ve never really been scared of anything before, but this somehow got to me.
As you know my family and I had been In Canada for 6 weeks, we are now back in the city, and I was fine, I thought I was fine. The whole drive went well (I love driving), but as soon as we had unpacked everything into the apartment, I walked up to my mom, said “I’m having a panic attack”, and I burst into tears, started shaking violently and felt like I was going to throw up. I cried, threw up for hours, and shook violently until I fell asleep. 4 days later I’m still feeling extremely uneasy. I don’t want to look at my phone, I can’t eat, and honestly, I’m scared that I’ll have a 5th panic attack. Like I’ve said in a previous post I’ve been in pain every day for 8 years now, and my usual way of dealing with it, is to ride it out. Oh but anxiety, a fucking panic attack, that ride fucking sucks!