Fearing the Unknown
May 19, 2003

That was the title of a poem I wrote about a time when I went through an anxiety attack that lasted over 2 months during my senior year at high school. At that time I had been dating a guy for over a year, we were very attached. I got a sudden, unexplainable fear of everything. I feared death, I feared hell, I feared life, I feared things I couldn't identify (though that certainly didn't stop my fear), I feared, too, that I was going insane, that something was wrong with me and I was going to end up alone in the crazy house. My grandfather and great great grandmother having been paranoid schizophrenics doesn't help matters any either. I was most afraid of death, mine, his, or anyone else important to me. I was also deathly afraid of hell but stubbornly unwilling to go back to christianity. Ex helped me through that, and for that, he holds a special place in my heart always.

I went to counseling, I got too scared one day, and I called the number of a psychiatrist who referred me to the local mental health facility. After assuring them that I wasn't going to kill myself or someone else (that the result of that is what I was scared of happening, so why would I do it?), I got myself a psychiatrist. After so many sessions with her, she told me that she was fairly certain that I had anxiety disorder, she just needed a few more sessions to justify any medications. I quit going shortly after that, the therapy was making me feel worse talking about it. I saw a program one night, while I was dwelling on the decision whether or not to keep going to therapy. It was a program on people with anxiety disorder and panic attacks. The things they had to say struck to my very heart, all the people with anxiety disorder, everything they described was everything I was experiencing to every fine point they brought up. I knew what I had. I didn't need the medication. I wasn't going crazy, I wasn't becoming a paranoid schizophrenic. I quit going to therapy and I got better soon after that. Swimming in all those fears was the cloaked monster at the heart of it all. The thing that becomes scarier because it is unknown. Identifying was the step to my recovery.

I thought perhaps, though, that I had done away with any future episodes. Not so. This past Friday, earlier in the day, my mind wandered on what ifs, one of them happened to be what if the fiancé and I do end up going our separate ways. I always fear I may some day lose my son, but this way never occurred to me. I don't think he would fight me on custody issues (since he knows how much of a mommy's boy our son is), but there will be times when I have to give my son up and not see him for extended periods of time. That started it, and the issue snowballed from there until I had a full-blown anxiety attack Friday night when I went into work. Thankfully, the fiancé was working 3rd shift too, it helped to have someone to hold onto. I don't think he realized the truth when I told him I had anxiety disorder, at least not as well as he did Friday night. However, if one of us had been home with our son (he was with our roommates), I may not have had as much anxiety as I did. Not that I don't trust them, but well, it's hard to explain. I began to fear that the house might catch on fire and our son would be trapped, and even if that didn't happen, that I may someday lose him. The last time I feared something like this, the person was there then, but almost a year later, I did, in fact, lose them--not quite the way I thought I would, but I did lose him. That thought made this anxiety worse. At least, though, there was only one thing to fear that night. It was only a mini-attack, and it was over within 4 hours after the strongest wave of it. It only had one fear attached to it (though it was a very big fear) instead of several. Nonetheless, it took so much energy out of me, that after I got off work at 7:00am, I hit the bed at 7:30am and slept until 9:00pm without waking up more than twice to go to the bathroom.

I still don't think I need medication for this, I'm afraid medication will only screw things up even more anyway. I believe I have the strength to beat this disorder and move past it, even as I move through it.