My Story

Posted by admin on Nov 18, 2008 in Featured Articles | 0 comments

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

It’s five o’ clock a.m. I think I’ve been awake since two o’ clock. No, I know I’ve been awake. I’ve relived every minute of the past three hours too many times.

The clock strikes 7:04 and a piercing buzz stirs my cloudy state. I haven’t been asleep. I haven’t been awake. Minutes later I am in the bathroom staring down a row of pill bottles echoed by my mirrored form starting back at me. Chemically balancing my brain has become a mechanical process stripped of emotional attachment. I’ve cursed the pills, I’ve cursed myself and I’ve cursed the countless doctors and therapists that have peered sympathetically down their noses at me. I am still the same.

On the drive to work my head is throbbing, spinning, not there. Tiny bolts of energy rush down my spine and out of my fingertips; it is all I can do to stay focused on the road. I get into the office and I’m abnormally warm, hot even. Hot flashes? Please, no. Co-workers greet me warmly as they come in the door, “Good morning, how are you?” I give a smile and respond accordingly. “Morning. I’m good, yourself?” I walk fast down the hallways, weaving between chatting women commenting on each other’s hair. I need to find a bathroom.

       I sprint across the lobby and up a flight of stairs. I don’t care that I’m shaking, I don’t care that people are staring. I have to get away, I have to get where no one knows me. I’m halfway to the stall when it hits: a crushing wave of nausea and disorientation. I am no longer in control; I can no longer hold it in. I am the Ark. I am the tsunami minutes after the quake. I shake and cry and I shake and cry. Pull it together, get off the floor. The voices of my entire life crash through me, roaring sentiments I wish I could attest to. Don’t be so dramatic, what is so wrong? I try to fight back; I try to control my shaking hands, my ruined face. Countless battles rage within me and it isn’t until there is a banging on the door too loud to ignore that I realize I am no longer alone.

“Do you need help?” A voice trickles through the cracks of my incomprehension, weak and scared. To her, I am a threat to understanding, compassion and sympathy. I push the stall open and shut it quickly behind me hoping to leave my panic inside like Peter Pan trapping his shadow. But my shadow never leaves and I can’t stop shaking, despite the helpless look on this girl’s face. “I…I. Please, get Julie.” I fire the words at her like bullets; she jumps and runs out as I crumple to the ground once more. Breathe.

Minutes later Julie stands at the bathroom door. She won’t come in. She teeters on the edge of the threshold, one foot in, one foot out. I can’t blame her, but I hate her all the same. As my manager, Julie was always strict with me but still my favourite boss. Now I am on display and she doesn’t really want to watch; this is a side of people you hope never to see in the work place. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

I can’t answer her no matter how hard I try. I cannot believe I asked for her – she’ll never treat me the same. “I’m…attack…panic…sorry…panic attack.” I watch her face contort as I spit out the words with instant regret.

She looks at the floor. “What’s causing it? Are you fighting with someone, is it something to do with work? What should I do?” Luckily, she doesn’t look like she expects an answer. I don’t know what changed her mind but now she enters the bathroom, picking me up and helping me out the door and towards her office. Forty minutes later I am sitting at her desk, still shaking and breathing fast. No one has come in for what feels like forever, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to show my face here again.

They say it is a deficiency of a chemical called serotonin in my brain. The paradox of being categorized as clinically depressed is that you never had a choice in the matter. Stimulants and depressants in my brain, chemicals I’ve never seen running through an organ I’ll never touch, decide what I will feel day to day. I am not sad, I am not having a bad day, I am not an angst-ridden teen unappreciative of the world around me; I am a normal university student with an abnormal amount of synapse firings and chemical uptake.