Anxiety

Anxiety may as well be my middle name. For as long as I can remember anxiety has been a major part of my personality. From the age of 4 freaking out when my little brother got lost in IKEA (turns out he’d waddled off to go look at the toys, that’s toddlers for you though) to even now. At the age of 23, the thought of having to speak in front of a large group of people puts my stomach into knots. Or knowing that a deadline is looming, or feeling I’m letting someone down even if I’m not. I can make myself nauseous with anxiety which is absolutely exhausting.

Until I was diagnosed by my doctor with the double whammy of clinical anxiety and depression, I just thought that feeling worried about everything was normal. But apparently not, go figure! My family always used to tell me that my Great Auntie Meg felt the same way when she got really nervous or anxious, which further emphasized that this was obviously a normal part of life. Or if not, it was at least a family trait. For me anxiety doesn’t feel like a mental illness because I’ve dealt with it for years. The panic I face just feels like another hurdle in day to day life, panic attacks are just a walk in the park. Not to say that they aren’t the end of the world when they’ve got me by the throat and I’m gasping for air and can’t think straight because of the overwhelming panic that’s taken over my whole brain. I feel awful for my partner John having to deal with me when I’m in that state. The stress can make me lash out even when it’s nobodies’ fault that I’m stressed out or agitated, it’s just life. In the words of the infamous meme, it really do be like that sometimes.

Being disabled doesn’t exactly help either though. By no means am I saying being disabled is a bad thing but having a physical disability doesn’t exactly make you inconspicuous does it? You stick out like a sore thumb. Well, I do anyway. A powerchair isn’t the quietest or smallest thing to have with you all day every day, people are going to notice it. Going out I always feel like people are staring at me or that I’m getting in the way to the extent that I’ve had nightmares about crashing into things in my chair and getting kicked out of places. Nothing like that has actually ever happened to me in real life though, which is very telling fact about anxiety. Pretty much most of the time the things you worry obsessively about never become a reality, they’re just clouds of fear and anguish floating about inside the darkest places of your mind.

I think my childhood anxieties could have just melted away with time but being bullied in school about everything from my disability to my hair colour, ginger and proud might I just add, just exemplified and fed those anxieties and insecurities until they became part of me. Kids can be really cruel. The things people said to me as a child have stuck with me to this day and only amplified the awful niggling thoughts and insecurities in my head that have fed the putrid anxiety monster.

But no matter what those in my past have said to me or the internal struggles I have with accepting my identity as a disabled person, I fight on. Living with mental health issues is just part of my reality. Anxiety is a beast I battle with everyday and it’s not always easy but I know I have people around me that can keep me grounded when I’m having a particularly difficult time. I’m working to manage my inner demons and not let them take me down because that’s not who I am. I am more than my mental illness. I am me.