The Invisible Illness

Anxiety. The feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease that accompanies a desire to do something. When it comes to mental health, however, this sense of unease can morph into a sense of uneasiness and apprehension, often accompanied by compulsive behavior and panic attacks. It is the need to act, to move, even when there is nothing one might do, nowhere one might go.

Depression. A persistently low mood, or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life.

Have you ever imagined what it might be like to experience both of these mental health conditions at the same time?

The need to move, yet a lack of motivation to do anything. The knowledge that you are not good enough, but the need to do something to make your situation better. The drive to act, but with nothing to act toward.

To have even one of these conditions is bad enough, but to experience both at the same time? It is like living a nightmare - one that you never wake up from.

You see the jokes all the time - the person who wanders into the kitchen and opens the fridge, but can’t remember why they were there. The one to enters a room and flips on the light switch, but never even had a reason for entering the room in the first place.

What they don’t tell you, however, is the manic, panicked state of mind that person is in, when anxiety is pulling the strings. The way they rush into the room like the hounds of hell are on their heels. The way they grip the door handle of that fridge so tightly, yank it open almost violently, as though they are attempting to break it off its hinges.

And yet, even as they reach their destination, they are already berating themselves - angry that they gave in, upset that their body feels as though it is thrumming with energy, and yet unable to complete even the simplest of tasks when they call upon that energy. Because this energy - it isn’t theirs to control. It comes in waves, often culminating in a case of ‘restless leg syndrome’ - energy thrumming through their legs as night, keeping them awake at all hours, until they feel like a zombie waking in the morning.

This need to move, to act, to do - it isn’t theirs to command. Many have referred to both depression and anxiety as having a silent passenger within their minds and/or bodies - but it is far from silent. It is a pressure behind the eyes, a course of energy with no direction running through the body. At times, it is even a physical pain Restless legs keeping them awake at night is simply the beginning; a tightening of muscles, pounding migraines, and ghostly pains that have no physical explanation - all of these are the constant companion of those stricken with depression or anxiety . . . or worse, both.

For many suffering from anxiety and/or depression, however, the pain and exhaustion is only the beginning, for the health field is of little to no help. Mental health continues to be viewed as the imaginary field by many professionals - the pain associated with it laughed off. Like many forms of ableism, it is scoffed at and ignored, claimed to be imaginary, and simply a cry for attention - not a real diagnosis.

Yet even without a physical explanation for these phantom pains, they are real - as real as any broken bone or virus. Yet according to the National Library of Medicine, those who spoke out regarding their depression were largely shuttled off to high-cost psychiatrists or plagued by medications that did little to alleviate their symptoms - or worsened them.

Why, then, should one speak up about their anxiety or depression? To be plagued by pills which can effectively change the entire personality of an individual, or send them into such a stupor that they find it impossible to hold down a steady job?

And that is not even to mention the scorn of their peers, their friends, and their families.

Mental illness is, in many ways, an invisible illness - and thus easy for many to dismiss as mere laziness, or a quest for attention. It is neither, however, and to ignore a very real illness is akin to ignoring a broken arm, or a leg - for that is very much how it can feel, at times, or those who suffer from it.

This combination of these two illnesses - these two disabilities - is as horrible as it is invisible. And to listen to those we love dismiss them, as though we are simply attention seekers, or as though we simply do not care?

That is true hell.