Close your eyes…

A dark room with no windows, but a small hole that’s just big enough for Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide to travel to and fro so you don’t die. Imagine suddenly the concrete floor transforms into quicksand. Better yet, the floor is still concrete, but through that little hole is being poured sand so quickly that before you could blink, it’s to your ankles. It’s building faster and faster. That caving feeling once it gets to your chest and you suddenly can’t breathe because the walls are closing in around you – that’s anxiety. Anxiety is being trapped in a room that you can’t get out of. Anxiety is speaking in front of a large crowd for the first time when you know you suck at public speaking. Anxiety is being broken up with through a text from the love of your life after nearly two years after you bought a one way train ticket to spend the summer with him. Anxiety is being sat down by your mother days before your birthday to let you know that your grandmother passed away. Anxiety is not knowing how you’re going to feed your family and feeling like you’ve failed as a parent. Anxiety is feeling a lump in your breast in the middle of the night and knowing that your mother died from breast cancer. Anxiety is deciding whether or not you want to keep the baby you’re carrying when the father doesn’t want it. Anxiety is living a double life as a stripper and a full-time college student because you’re first generation and you don’t know how to make ends meet, but you go by another pseudonym because they know you as Camilla and not Lady of the Night. Anxiety is living life on the edge of God knows what and you’re wondering whether or not you’re going to be pushed off, or if you should jump first.

The sand has now gone past your chest and up to your ears. You keep fighting to climb to the top of the sand pile, but you feel it slowly pouring into your ears and your hearing has turned into silent ringing. You realize this is the end, and this is the way you’re going to go out – everything you never accomplished, all the people you didn’t love, all the people that never loved you start to run through your mind as you say your final goodbyes to the world – that’s depression. The way I would describe depression is an ominous figure of all of your worst fears put together. Depression is the aching feeling of a hangover except it’s all over your body. Depression is the feeling of a grown-ass man just sitting on your shoulders while wrapping his thighs around your chest and his arms around your head. Depression doesn’t give a fuck about where you are or who you’re with. It’s a ruthless asshole who just comes to ruin you. Depression is the bully you never stood up to in middle school. Depression is the constant warp in time replaying the moment you laid your mother to rest at your funeral. Depression is the day your husband was shot in a driveby. Depression is hurt, pain, agony all categorized into one word that has the ability to take over your life and leave you stranded if you don’t know how to swim.

Hello Depression…

I could go into my whole “first experience with depression” thing, but I’ll save that for another post. I’m writing this blog to prove that depression is a sick SOB that doesn’t care about how good everything in your life is going – it’ll just show up in your life unannounced without warning and just take shit over. I’m at a point right now in my life where literally nothing is wrong. Not bragging or boasting, but I’m perfectly fine. I have amazing friends, I love my job, I’m in a healthy relationship – I’m good right now. A few hiccups every now and again, but I’m alright.

For the past few days at work, my boss had been asking me if everything is okay. Everything is; at least I’d like to think so. She ran into me in the bathroom yesterday and asked me again if everything was okay and offered me an opportunity to talk – normally, I wouldn’t have because I like to keep church and state separate, but I decided to take the offer. I went into her office with the complete intentions of just sitting and smiling like a princess, but I couldn’t help but just bawl. Everything that I haven’t been able to say for months – or at least was too afraid to say, claim or admit aloud – just came pouring out of me like vomit from a bad hangover. I don’t remember the last time someone had asked me, “Are you okay?”. Of course, my friends and family ask, but for some reason, the question coming from my boss, a woman who barely knew me but I could tell was genuinely concerned, made me breakdown. I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t stop feeling all of these different emotions, but the scariest part of it all was when it stopped, it stopped. I went to HR later that day and they asked me how I felt. My response was, “I don’t”. For me, depression has a way of controlling my emotions like a game of Bandersnatch on Netflix. It chooses for me like I’m being programmed and controlled in a body that’s not really mine. Am I scaring you yet? Good, now you know what it’s like to be inside my mind.

At work today (keep in mind, I’m writing this like months before my blog even officially launched), my boss asked me to do a simple task, I asked him for help and he told me no because it’s something I should just know how to do on my own. Normally stuff like that doesn’t get to me. I proceeded with the execution of the project, submitted it to my bosses, and just broke down crying. Why? I don’t know, but I cried for what seemed like thirty minutes in the women’s bathroom – and in hindsight, I was pretty lucky that was a dry spell because no one was in the bathroom today. My heart began to shallow, my head began to pound and I felt pinching all up and down the left side of my body. Dear God, I’m going to die in this bathroom from a panic attack. I went to the doctor later that day only to realize that I basically had muscle spasms and headaches from putting too much strain on my body. In my eyes, that meant I had a stress stroke. The point to this story is you can be fine, but that doesn’t mean you’re okay. It’s okay not to be okay. Sure, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that doesn’t mean you can’t focus on healing the wound it left for a little while until you’re ready to get back out there.