You may have been wondering where I've been. I've basically been hiding out for the last two weeks and dealing with some serious mental health issues. I know what you're thinking. Mental health issues are not sexy. You are right about that. I usually try to forget that I have mental health issues. I hide them away as well as I can so that people on the outside can't see them. Though, they always seem to find a way to pop back up at the worst time possible. I'm finally at the point in my life that I am accepting that mental health issues are just part of who I am. Either people accept that or they don't. Regardless, this is my life.
I've always had anxiety issues, even as a child. I had a very abusive childhood, which has caused me to have C-PTSD as an adult. This has made my anxiety issues worse. I mostly deal with the symptoms of C-PTSD quietly inside myself. Occasionally, I will reach out to Husband and he is very supportive. He really doesn't understand though. Although he does his best to help me when I'm struggling, I thought it was easier to just deal with it all alone and not bother anyone else. I thought I had my anxiety under control. I would take deep breaths, close my eyes, and calm myself down when I would have a panic attack. Everything was fine. I've been coping very well. Then, something happened to make me realize that I really don't have it under control and I can't do it all alone.
I don't want to talk about the incident that happened because I am afraid it will send me back into a panic attack. Let's just say that something happened that made me convinced that I was going to die. When my brain latched on to the belief that I was going to die, my whole body flushed. I had an intense hot flash and my heart started racing. I started to sweat and it felt like the temperature of the room had increased by fifty degrees. I felt like I couldn't breathe and I was hyperventilating. It felt like something heavy was sitting on my chest. My stomach was in a tight knot and I felt like I was going to vomit. I was shaking so badly that I could barely text Husband. I sent him some panicked and hysterical text messages. I was completely freaking out. He was at work, so there was nothing he could do. I'm sure he felt awful for not being there when I needed him. I was all alone and very scared.
On his way home from work, he stopped at the store to get a gift for me. His heart was in the right place but I don't think he realized just how far over the edge I had gone. I freaked out even more because he was late coming home from work. I was convinced something happened to him. I just needed him there with me. So, I called him in a panic. He assured me that he would be home soon and I tried to calm myself down. It just wasn't working. I tried all of the tricks that I'd learned for dealing with panic attacks. None of them worked. I had completely lost touch with reality.
When Husband got home, he found me in the bedroom, hiding under blankets, in the dark. He held me and I just started crying hysterically. I was a complete wreck all night. Nothing he did could calm me down. At one point, after I had finally fallen asleep, I woke up screaming. I could only sleep for about twenty minutes at a time before I'd jump awake in a panic. It was so awful.
The next day, I was just as bad. I called a nurse line and was told to go to urgent care to get checked out. So, I did. They quickly realized that I was in a state of panic and tried to calm me down. It wasn't working. So, they sent me home with some anxiety meds. I was somewhat relieved because I really wanted to feel better at this point. It had been over 24 hours of a constant panic attack and I was exhausted.
I went home and thought about taking the medication but that made me feel even more scared because I had never taken anxiety meds before, so I didn't know what to expect. I decided to wait for Husband to get home so that I wasn't alone. That night, he was so tired from me keeping him up the night before, that he said he would rather I wait to take the meds because he would likely pass out so hard that he couldn't watch me for a bad reaction. So, I didn't take them. That ended up being a bad idea. It took me a long time to fall asleep. When I finally did, I woke up screaming again. It was another night of waking up every 15-20 minutes in a state of panic.
I was hoping that I would wake up feeling better the next day. That didn't happen. I was still hysterically crying. I was in a rolling panic attack. Just when I thought I was coming down from my panic, it would roll over me like a large wave, drowning me again. Everything around me felt like a dream. There was a haze around reality. I couldn't function at all. The two biggest things in my life are sex and music. I couldn't even have sex or listen to music anymore. I was in a very deep depression. That day, I took the anxiety meds. It did numb my anxiety a lot, however, it also made me sleep. I just passed out and slept. And slept. And slept. I still couldn't function.
For a whole week, I was stuck in this panic attack. I was so lost. I would take the anxiety meds at night so that I could get some sleep. During the day, when I wasn't crying, I was just staring off into space lifelessly. I couldn't laugh or hold a conversation. I could barely eat anything because my stomach was so upset. I was lost inside the worst panic attack I've ever had. I didn't know how to get out of it. I kept reassuring myself that I was going to be okay. I repeated it over and over. It didn't help at all. I finally lost hope.
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