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Adventures with Anxiety

Join me as I reflect on how anxiety has affected my life over the past five years.

By Lexie LloydPublished 5 years ago 15 min read
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Wuddup my fellow nervous Nancies,

During my first year at UNC Chapel Hill, I took a course classified as a "first year seminar." What is a first year seminar, you might ask? It's a class exclusive to freshmen, that typically covers an interesting topic (and is basically a guaranteed 'A').

While some people took seminars on World War II or jazz, I went for Coming of Age in the 20th Century. In the course description, it said we would be "employing coming of age autobiographies where the authors focused primarily on the periods of childhood and adolescence into young adulthood."

After a semester of diving into the backgrounds of strangers, my professor wanted us to reflect on our own lives and write a 15-page autobiography on something that had transformed us.

Every week we had to come to class with a new portion of our story and were given the opportunity to read it aloud to the class. It became clear almost immediately that everyone had taken this assignment to heart as tears were spilt on a weekly basis while students read their stories.

There were those of us, myself included, who never wanted to share our stories aloud, but witnessing how raw and open my classmates could be was eye opening. I had never and would never experience another classroom environment that felt so utterly free of judgement.

Some people wrote about the loss of a family member or a difficult move, but I wrote about my struggle with anxiety. If you want to read the essay I wrote as a budding young writer, gird your loins because the metaphors are forced and the writing is awkward, but they get the point across.

Read my Anxiety Essay Vol. 1 attached below!

After reading back over my essay (which makes me cringe every time), I thought it would be an interesting experiment to reflect on how my anxiety has transformed over the five years since. So, I'm going to talk about my adventures with anxiety post-first year seminar but with the same forced-metaphor-cheesiness I did before. Loins girded?

Before I was a "little fish in a deep river," but I've since undergone a metamorphosis. I think the best way to talk to you about my journey with anxiety and depression is to walk you through these changes.

STAGE 1: Little fish in a river to big fish in a river.

When I wrote that essay my freshmen year of college, I felt like I was finally overcoming this huge monster that had taken over my life. College was supposed to be a land of endless possibilities and new beginnings. And for a while, it was.

I grew from a little fish into a big fish who was unafraid to take risks. I rarely remember taking my anxiety into account before making a decision. I was chugging along on that first big hill on a rollercoaster, feeling the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

I became apart of a tight friend group full of reckless and wild people. They introduced me to new foods and people and ways of thinking. I could feel myself expanding into this bigger and more important person than I had ever been before.

I was growing and becoming the big fish. I was the eater, not the eaten. I was hungry for adventures and experiences I had never had before and for a year and a half I lived a blissfully naive life.

But with every hill on a rollercoaster, there's a drop on the other side.

STAGE 2: Big fish in a river to tiny worm under a rock.

The start of my junior year is when everything began to crumble away. I don't know why it happened, but I was shrinking smaller and smaller and smaller. I had gone from the top of the food chain to the very bottom.

The worst part was that I didn't even care. But before I didn't even care, I didn't even notice it was happening. One day, I feel like I snapped awake after having been asleep for four months.

Four months full of sleeping all day, avoiding friends, skipping class, and not taking care of myself. Reading this sentence now it doesn't even do it justice.

When I say sleeping all day, I mean leaving my room once in the morning to stock pile food so I could sit in my bed and count the hours until it was time to go to sleep again.

When I say avoiding my friends, I mean sneaking out the back door of my apartment, driving around until 3 AM and ignoring text messages because it took too much mental capacity to smile.

When I say skipping class, I mean only going to a handful of lectures out of all my courses for the semester. I was willing to sacrifice my attendance points and let my grades fall a letter, or sometimes two, all to just sit at home and do nothing.

And when I say not taking care of myself I mean binge drinking, not brushing my hair, and having unpainted toe nails. I'm laughing writing this because if you knew me, you'd know I've had some form of nail polish on my toes every day for the past eight years of my life.

At the time, I didn't realize it, and nobody around me did either, but I was depressed. I felt so apathetic about life, I would've been content to crawl under a rock and die if that meant I didn't have to expend any more energy.

I used to think depression meant feeling physically sad, but that isn't what I've found. I turn into a shell. There's absolutely nothing inside. No emotion. No logic. I was just running on autopilot.

STAGE 3: Tiny worm under a rock to big fish in the ocean.

I was a tiny worm until I got the notion to study abroad. Honestly, I never even thought about studying abroad when entering college, but one of my best friends found a cheap program in Galway, Ireland and the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Something about getting out of Chapel Hill lit a fire inside of me that began to warm up the cold corpse I had become. I ended up getting accepted into the program, and it was one of the best things I have ever done.

It scares me to think what would have happened if I had stayed at UNC for another semester. Looking back, I was at a rock bottom, but I know I was capable of digging that hole a little deeper.

I already had professors asking about my well being, so it was only a matter of time before my facade wouldn't work on my friends anymore. I feel very lucky to have left when I did.

I went to Ireland and every rain drop felt like an oasis after walking in the desert. Every glass of Guinness filled me up from my toes to my hair, making me bubbly and light and bringing a smile to my lips that had never come so easily.

It was scary, but it was exhilarating and everything I saw was with fresh eyes. Even the shitty days were better than the best days I had the semester before. And when I say shitty, I mean you stay out in an Irish club until 2 AM, walk home through the wind and rain, fall asleep in your flat that doesn't have heat and wake up to your hair frozen to your face.

I rode that sweet high straight into the job I got the following summer. I was in the middle of nowhere Kentucky, but I had never seen so much green. In stark contrast to the freezing Irish nights, my house had no AC and I woke up in a puddle of sweat on most days.

But that was okay because I walked out into the fresh air every morning with a cup of coffee and my new friends, taking in every second of the summer breeze. Then just like with every high, I crashed.

STAGE 4: Big fish in the ocean to tiny particle floating in the ocean.

I can honestly say, I never expected this crash to happen. I came back to UNC excited to be living in a house with all my friends who were finally back from studying abroad.

You see, they had all studied abroad the previous fall semester and I was the lone wolf to go abroad that spring. When we all finally collided again, something had changed. You could feel it in the air.

You could also feel how quickly the state of our house was deteriorating. First came the bugs then the mold then the mice then the condemnation.

I was working several jobs at the time, desperate to replenish my bank account after studying abroad. Sprinkle on top high-level science classes and you got a recipe for a break down.

I fell back into my avoidance routine. Something inside of me just loves to isolate myself. I think it's a defense mechanism that works under the assumption that if I can't function properly and nobody sees it, did it really happen?

It was at this point while I was slipping back into my depression that Belle and I had to find new housing. In November. During finals. All of our friends had kindly vacated the premises weeks before—leaving us the following duties:

Packing up the entire house, including but not limited to the kitchen, living room, spare closets, laundry room, and outdoor shed.

Dealing with Keith, Kaith, and Koith who were our landlord fam bam that were trying to sell the house once we left.

Barricading the doors against the ever growing mouse colony that lived in the walls and partied when the sun went down.

Most importantly, not dying from mold infestation, but sacrificing all of my roommates's possessions to it.

But I digress. The point is, I wish I could say that the housing situation was all that was going on in my life, but the universe is a cruel mistress.

My roommate and I were lucky enough to find new housing which consisted of us moving everything we owned into the master bedroom of someone else's apartment. (And then sharing that room for the last few weeks of the semester).

Maybe you've never truly been down on your luck in this way, but it beats the shit out of you. It's a kick to the stomach and a gouge to the eyes. It makes you black and blue inside and out.

I was smack in the middle of finals at this time and I'm not even gonna lie, I might as well have failed all of them. That semester was my worst by a landslide, but I was at such a point with my anxiety and depression that I couldn't give a flying fuck.

Oh, you think this story gets better from here? That next semester, my roommate and I took over the lease in that apartment with one of our ex-roommates and it felt like selling away my soul. Dramatic, yes. Accurate, also yes.

I got new jobs that worked around my schedule, causing me to get up for work before the sunrise and then running back in between and after classes. By "classes" I mean my naps I took instead of going to lectures.

I quit any and all clubs I had every joined. I practically stopped going to class all together. I stayed in my room and listened for movement before I went to the kitchen. I drove around on the highway in the middle of the night.

I was never in silence. One day my headphones just became gorilla glued to my ears and it was almost physically painful not to be distracted from the constant radio chatter of my brain.

I was floating. Floating around in my head, hostage to my thoughts. Floating through life, desperate for the day to end, the week to end, the month to end because the next one might be better.

And so I floated. I rode every current, uncaring of where it took me or what the consequences were. I may as well have floated all the way around the world and back, because I was so numb I would never have noticed.

Once school ended, it did get a little better. Belle and I's friends finally left and we had a moment to reflect on what we had just undergone. Not that we hadn't already been reflecting for the past year in drunken fits of passion, but the clarity was astonishing.

We were getting ready to go to California. You may notice a trend, and so have I, that change is both the devil and an angel in my life. It can weigh me down, drowning me under the water until I have no more air in my lungs and it can lift me up like a life jacket. I gasp for air when I hit the surface and it's never felt so sweet.

But before California, there was Wyoming and there was my sister.

STAGE 5: Tiny particle floating in the ocean to a clown fish in a reef.

The moment I drove away from Chapel Hill, I cried. Chapel Hill had become my home and then it betrayed me. I was aimless, without an anchor drifting through the world looking for something to grab on to.

So I drifted to my sister. We went out to Wyoming and Montana to do environmental field work. She took me on this big, grand, magical adventure. Full of giant wild animals and terrifying thunderstorms and dozens and dozens of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Every cup of spice tea reminded me what happiness tasted like. Every game of banana-grams spelled out "you are loved." Every 4:30 AM alarm was the start to a new reason to keep breathing.

I stopped floating, but I wasn't anchored to my sister. She had just found a way to ground me to what is simple in life. Every time she replayed Hamilton, I knew I could find solace in a melody. Every time she made me fend for myself in the night to run to the bathroom, I remembered what it felt like to feel exhilarated about the unknown. Every time she couldn't finish a plank, I could laugh at failure and know that tomorrow we would try again for success.

I came back to North Carolina full. I was full of life and everything that is included. All the shades of gray.

I was a clown fish in a reef. You know, those little orange and white fish that go in and out of the anemone. Willing to go out into the world but not without a healthy dose of hesitation because Belle and I's road trip of the decade was here.

The next six months were full of terror and elation and confusion and anxiety and self-satisfaction. Every time I strayed too far from the reef I would get scared and would swim right back to my safe anemone.

The transition to San Diego was hard. Very very hard, especially the first month. Belle and I lived in various Airbnb's during that time and the feeling of instability was powerful.

While things felt crazy and out of control and foreign, I still had those simple anchors inside of me. Don't get me wrong, I had many a spiraling fits of anxiety during this whole process, but I didn't experience the same numbing depression I had experienced the years before.

I had a blank slate before me. I could be anyone or do anything or go anywhere and that's pretty liberating.

STAGE 6: A clown fish in a reef to Marlin from Finding Nemo looking for his son.

I'm still a little clown fish, but now I'm Marlin from Finding Nemo. I'm a lil fish who will swim across the entire ocean, battle giant squids, and navigate minefields to chase what I love and believe in.

And I believe in me.

I'm terrified like 70 percent of the time because I have no idea what I want in life. Every time I swim a little too far from my anemone of safety I get scared and want to turn back.

Then one day, I turned around and realized I swam out of sight of my anemone long, long ago and the only way is forward now.

But I know that at the end of this journey, I'll find a Nemo. I'll find that new adventure that will be bigger, grander, and more magical than any before and that's enough reason for me to keep swimming.

Obviously, you've noticed a trend between my essays that they end with "a moment of clarity" and on a note that the future is optimistic and everything is kittens and rainbows. That's because when I'm suffering from my mental illness I can't write about it. Most of the times I don't even know it's back.

It's like when someone you see every day is losing weight, but you can't tell because the change is so gradual. Mental illness is that way too. It gradually creeps in until it has touched every aspect of your life.

And when you come out on the other side of it, everything does feel like kittens and rainbows. You're left sitting at your kitchen table one morning reflecting over why you've made everything so much more difficult than it has to be.

I've come to terms with the fact that this will be a battle: I'll have to fight this for the rest of my life. It's the great white shark to my lil clown fish, but I'm hoping one day we can coexist together peacefully.

anxiety
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About the Creator

Lexie Lloyd

Scientist meets graphic designer trying to make it out in San Diego, California.

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