I am an Anxious Person

A serious post today about some personal and kind of dark topics, so if you like lighter fare, maybe skip this one. I saw a tumblr post today that got me thinking in a kind of depressing spiral, and so instead of simply being moody, I thought I'd write about it.

To start out with, I've suffered from anxiety and depression my entire life. I honestly don't remember a time that I didn't have high levels of anxiety. Sure, there were periods where it was better than others times, but I can remember intense anxiety as a toddler. While I've suffered from varying levels of depression (never really at the same level as anxiety, so I think of it as a much lesser thing much of the time) most of my life, that didn't really onset in a real way until I was in middle school.

The tumblr post I saw was talking about how when you have depression, you aren't a person sepperate from it anymore. You can't remember who you where before, and that can be terrifying. The depression is your identity.

This is something I identify very strongly with. The first time I went to see a therapist, I was 12. I was totally unwilling to participate, but I went for a while and we both got more and more frustrated until one day I simply refused to go.

At that point, I was not ready to deal with my anxiety. I knew it existed. I knew it caused me problems. I was very emotionally intelligent and self aware at that age, and I knew exactly what was going on, both in the world around me, and in my own head. But I wasn't ready to deal with it.

It took a very long time for me to be ready. Over the next five years, I dealt with a few years of depression. That combined with the anxiety I had, which was being constantly amped up by external life factors, meant that the ages of 12-15 were kind of awful. I honestly don't remember large chucks of those years (just because part of me blocked it out), and I have a lot of memories that are very, very negative, just because of my mental state of the time.

Then, the fall I was 16, something happened. Actually a number of things happened, all at the same time:

1. I started going the the local community college, and, for the first time in years, was really able to develop my own life and relationships seperate from the negative memories of the past.

2. Some of the circumstances in my family dynamic changed, in a way that I was at first terrified by, but that I later realized was a very good thing. This lowered my general anxiety levels.

3. Lastly, and this is the big one, I ended up in a position where I was esentially mentoring a friend through a very intense period of his life. This turned out in the end to be a very negative experience for me, and after months of drama, anxiety, sleepless nights, and a few tears, I ended up in a position where I had to let him go. He had done things that I could not condone and I felt that if I stayed in any sort of relationship with him I was going to end up getting hurt a lot more than I already had.

Letting go of that was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I was very close to this person, and I had sunk months of my life into trying to help him. But in the end, there was nothing I could do unless he realized he needed to change. And he just wasn't ready.

All of these experiences combined, but particularly that last one, made me realize that I needed to be a more mentally stable person on a day to day basis. Being in school helped me realize the most important factor in all this: I was a person seperate from my anxiety. Having an identity seperate from that allowed me to decide to go find outside help.

For years and years, I had been terrified that if I wasn't anxious, I didn't know who I would be. I was a person who was anxious and depressed most of the time. If I didn't have that, what did I have? Losing my identity terrified me.

The situation with my friend also made me realize a lot of things about myself. I was holding myself back by not allowing myself to take full advantage of whatever help I could get. There was still a long way to go from there, but that was the all important and totally vital first step.

Every now and then, I think about that friend, who I haven't talked to in nearly a year. I often feel guilty about some of the events that took place. I was the person closest in the world to him, why couldn't I help him? In the end, all that really happened was that I was used by him, but why couldn't I help him while I had the chance? Why couldn't I keep over negative events from happening? I was the only person with any hope of doing that.

But I have to remind myself: He wasn't ready. And while I poured all of myself that I could into helping him, if he wasn't ready to be helped, there was nothing any of us could do. Accepting help is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

I am not just a person "with anxiety" and a person "who suffers from depression." I am an anxious person. I am a depressed person. These things are part of my identity.

I don't want to not have anxiety. I want to know how to manage it. I will never not have anxiety. I will never not have depression. But I don't let them own me. I own them. I couldn't do that at age 12, or 14, or 16. It took time to get here, but I did. Every person's journey is different. I wish mine had been faster and easier and less painful. But I had to do the things I did to end up here. And that journey certainly isn't over. I know it'll probably get a lot worse at some point in the future. I'll struggle with this my whole life. But that's okay, because that's who I am.

And it's certainly not always great even now. Yes, I was ready to accept outside help, but that doesn't mean everything was fixed. I struggle a lot with all of these things. My life in general is in a place where I am doing much better than in the past, but it's a journey that never ends.

If there are people in your life who are anxious or depressed, be there for them. Don't try to fix them. You can't help them unless they are ready to help themselves. Hug them. Make them food. Invite them to do things with you. But let them go on the journey they need to go on.