It’s weird how life can surprise you. By accident, it seems, you can become someone you never thought you would. I guess I thought that getting older and gaining more confidence would put me more at ease, but instead it’s had the opposite effect. I’ve walked further toward the crazy.
First I have to explain what might be obvious. Like everyone else, I am full of contradictions. Perhaps the biggest is that I am both a creative, dreamer, head-in-the-sky kind of person and a super logical, practical-almost-to-a-fault, organized and orderly kind of person. It’s true that I’m dedicating my life to studying things that barely make sense and yet if you ask me the most efficient way to do anything, I can name it almost immediately. It’s not that sometimes I’m the creative type and sometimes I’m the logical type. I am always both.
So while my head might be in the clouds, my feet are firmly on the ground. They used to be, at least.
I want to say it started about two years ago, but there were hints of it earlier. When I was a senior in college, something happened to me. I swear that I woke up on January 1st of that year with this restlessness I’d never had before. You know how people describe me? Calm. Always calm. I still appeared calm, but I had this new problem keeping my fingers and legs still. I couldn’t fall asleep at night. I chalked it up to anxiety about what I’d do after graduation.
I went off to graduate school and I guess for a year or more I was okay. Then it was January of 2008 and the restless energy came back full force. I was exercising a lot then, and I could never tell if the energy came from the exercising or if I was exercising because I didn’t know how else to calm myself down. My life changed in a lot of subtle ways, but to me it seemed dramatic because it was happening all at once. I’ve always been an introspective person, but suddenly I was overwhelmed with everything coming at me. It’s like I’m a computer who has to process all of this data. Previously, I had time enough to take everything apart and dissect it all in good time. Now there was so much data that I couldn’t comprehend it all. Instead I would focus in on very specific things, obsessing to the point where I sometimes had trouble remembering what had actually happened and what I had made up.
That’s when my feet left the ground. I felt crazy. My mind was racing all the time.
At the same time, I learned that I have high blood pressure. My doctor thought for a while that I might be hyperthyroid, meaning my metabolism and everything else, including my mind, would be running in overdrive. It seemed that there might be a medical explanation for the way I was feeling and I took comfort in that. When my blood tests came back and all my hormone levels were normal, there went my easy explanation.
Things got better. I started calling the weird energy and obsessions anxiety. I tried to deal with it on my own. Things got worse. I wrote a post about it. Hearing I wasn’t alone made a difference. Things got better, so I didn’t seek help. Things got a lot better. Things got a little worse and then better again.
When I say crazy, I don’t mean in the sense of the mental health stigma we have in our present culture. I mean that I actually felt a little out of my mind. At least for a girl who’s always had her feet planted so firmly on the ground. And it’s been really hard for me to make sense of it, because I’ve never heard anyone talk about this before and, quite honestly, I would have figured myself for a person affected by depression and never this very mild mania at the complete other end of the spectrum! Depression has left its mark all over my family for generations and so I was on guard for it, but this snuck up on me.
I can no longer describe myself honestly without mentioning this–whatever it is–but it’s hard, because I have such trouble understanding it myself. Talking and writing about it makes me feel better. It does scare me a bit, because there is such a big difference between being non-crazy and being crazy, but the gap doesn’t seem so wide between being a little crazy and out-of-my-mind crazy. Considering the medical history of my family only makes me more nervous. And at the same time as all of this, I must admit to finding it all a little amusing. I don’t always mind being a little less calm and predictable than I used to be. Plus, self acceptance is a much better place from which to deal with the anxiety when it sometimes becomes a problem.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I think, perhaps, that you don’t have anything to worry about until you can’t tell there’s a storm anymore. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to feel a little crazy, maybe a bit neurotic sometimes. And as long as you recognize your feelings to be what they are- a little crazy and bit neurotic- you’re fine. Also, HELLO? You are a writer. I’m sorry but you have to be a bit off your rocker to keep putting one sentence behind another. So, you’re in good company!
I think that the same thing has been happening to me and it is very new. I don’t know how to deal with the anxiety at all. I’ve been going to counseling, but it makes me feel like a basket case.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I too struggled with the same feelings starting just before college. Take care of yourself–whichever way you see fit–and you will be OK. You may always have triggers, but you’ll learn what to watch for and how to control it.
I feel like your situation is one that is very, very common for women in their 20s. It happened to my mom, my best friends, and myself as well. I have periods of time where I am a ridiculous basketcase and then periods of calm. I get overwhelmed very easily and very panicky. I wish I could offer up solutions for you, but I really don’t have any! I’ve always heard that depression is stress from the past and anxiety is stress from the future. I believe that’s very true! Feel better. If anything, writing should help :)
Writing helps me too, it helps take the edge off sometimes. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, so I’m anxious at all times.
At all times. About all things.
My husband and my friends call me Anxiety Girl.
I freaked out on my husband (before he was my husband) on gChat (while he was in Iraq, no less) about how I wasn’t sure if I could marry him because then people would know then that we were having sex because that’s what married people do. And I couldn’t have that.
I’m in a constant state of anxiety, the low grade, low key is easy to handle. I’m even getting to be a pro at the middle grade levels of anxiety, because I have rushes of those every day about things most people would just shake their heads at. But I’ll never get used to the anxiety and panic attacks. Medicine helps, but only so much. It doesn’t STOP the anxiety, it helps me to deal with it better.
With me, even the smallest decisions I have to make turn into major ones. Because I can’t just take things as they come. I have to plan things, or I feel like nothing is in my control and I have to fight that much harder to keep myself calm.
It’s not always rational, the anxiety I feel. In fact, 95% of the time it’s not rational. It’s not supposed to be rational, or we’d be able to handle it better, you know?
If you ever need to talk, you know how to reach me. :]
Wow, that was intense. Sorry to hear that you’re having problems. I get anxious at times; not to the extent that you’re describing, but it’s still not nice, and there isn’t always a tangible reason for it. I hope you get better soon.
Aww sorry to hear that you’re struggling. I’m a contradiction like you, btw.
I realized recently that I have spent more of my life anxious than not. I can relate and I don’t think others see it until I am under intense pressure. The thing is, I never want them to see me lose my cool. Ever. I am embarrassed when they do.
Hope it gets “a lot better” soon.
“Now there was so much data that I couldn’t comprehend it all.”
I hear this a hyper-current malady called Information Sickness that really only became relevant during our generation, especially given modern circumstances. There is very little out there to support the idea because it’s so new, but universities are considering launching formal studies of the phenomenon.
I get a form of this, too. If I have too many channels of communication open and people contact me in rapid succession before I can answer, their voices blend together and I can’t remember who said what and the voices start to blend together. It’s dizzying.
Trust me, you’re still not alone. I think being in our twenties is part of it. There are so many choices to be made, so many paths one can follow. We’re on constant overdrive, working hard to achieve goals while attempting to figure ourselves out. Your description of yourself – a creative mind in the clouds with feet firmly planted on the ground – was the exact way I would have described myself a few years ago, but to be honest, I can’t say that’s an accurate description for me these days. But it’s not to say it won’t ever come back. I think once we get a little more stabilized in our lives and what we want to do, things will start falling into place again…or at least that’s the hope :)!
“the gap doesn’t seem so wide between being a little crazy and out-of-my-mind crazy.”
I know exactly what you mean.
I love the complete honestly your posts always have.