I'm not the girl you once put your faith in, just someone who looks like me

For a while now, I've been battling the sibling demons, depression and anxiety.  If you count my first spiral down into depression (a depression that was far, far worse than the thing I deal with now), in the fall of 2004, that makes six years, nearly seven.  The first time, I got help fairly promptly, because it was bad, and Sam and my mom knew something was wrong.  This second time, I don't know how long it took me to get help, because I know now that I was in deep denial that something was wrong.  For perhaps a year, even, I pretended I didn't know what was going on, and then it wasn't depression that led me to a doctor.  It was anxiety. 

Now, my problem is almost entirely anxiety, though I personally do not think you can quite uncouple the two; to be deeply anxious is to experience at least some low level of depression.  That is why the disorders are siblings.  It is nearly impossible for someone who doesn't know clinical anxiety to understand why this kind of anxiety needs help, and perhaps even medicinal help, but I'm going to try very hard to explain what it's like for me.  But first, because you might be the kind of person who scoffs at the idea of an anxiety so deep it is pathological, I want to say something about what your arguments might be.

1. Everyone worries!  I mean, come on.  Yes, I do believe everyone does worry.  Nearly everyone, anyhow.  But not everyone worries about having skin cancer because of a black spot on their toenail.  Not everyone has panic attacks brought on by the black spot.  Not everyone wakes up in the middle of the night, with night sweats, diarrhea, and splitting headaches, with anxiety as the cause.  Not everyone is convinced that the people they love are constantly a hair's breadth away from death and danger, and actively worries about it.  Most people don't have panic attacks due to homework, or being away from home, or getting a mortgage.  Panic attacks, in fact, are not normal.
2. You're just being irrational.  You should stop thinking about this stuff.  Well no shit.  Hence the disorder.  I know I'm being irrational and yet I can do nothing. to. stop. the. fear.  I can't stop the panic attacks by telling myself I'm being irrational, or I would have stopped the goddamn panic attacks.  I can't stop the anxiety caused by thinking that Sam's going to die by telling myself that I should just stop thinking about it, because it's irrational.  Because believe me, if that worked, I'd be fine right now.
3. You just want attention.  And this, this couldn't be farther away from the truth.  I was in denial for at least a year because I DIDN'T want the attention.  I can't explain to you how awful it feels to know your brain is failing you somehow, and to not want the people around you to know.  It's still damn hard to talk about; I'm guessing that most people around me didn't know that I struggle with this, and most won't, if they don't read this.  It's embarrassing and awful for me.  I can't even believe I'm writing this.
4. Mental disorders like anxiety are all in your head.  Snap out of it.  Well, if that worked, I'd be fine right now.  But arguments like this don't work, because they're simply not true.  They are all in your head, yes, but they're not something you can snap out of.  Believe me.

Anxiety, for me, produces a profound sense of otherness.  I don't know how else to say it.  The sense of otherness is also why I think my anxiety is coupled with a dash of depression.  Anxiety takes me to a place where I no longer understand how to react to things as myself.  I no longer experience things in the same way as I normally would.  It's hard to think of a concrete example; the best I can think of, and one of the things I told my doctor was that when Sam said something funny, it felt like I was forcing laughter.  Because nothing is truly funny when you feel this anxious everyday.  In some ways, it feels like I'm on the outside of life looking in, looking for the disaster around the next corner.  (Obviously, all these anxiety feelings, are, for the most part, banished pretty well by the help I'm getting.  Just so you know.)

It is the alonest place I can think of to be, and I say that with the depression in 2004 coming in second in terms of aloneness, and that one was clinical.  Anxiety makes you feel more alone because you are literally the only one in the world who is worried enough.  Remember, this is a pathology.  It's not sane.  Of course it's not true.  But inside, that is what it feels like.  You simply can't imagine why everyone around you isn't worried the way you are, because there is so much that could happen.  Gah!  So much!  And so you take it all in, and you take it all in, and you can't talk to people about it, because you're the only one who knows about it.  And you feel profoundly, profoundly alone.  It constantly works on you, and what ends up happening is, you have a panic attack.

(For the record, because everyone's are different, here are what my panic attacks are like:  there is always crying.  I cannot maintain a normal breathing pattern.  In the worst ones, I freeze, so that I literally cannot move.  That means I cannot wipe my tears away.  I cannot hug you back if you are trying to hug me.  I cannot move from where I'm standing or sitting.  It's just....frozenness.)

If you don't have a panic attack, you might end up waking in the middle of the night.  You go to the restroom.  You begin to have serious, serious heat problems and sweating.  And then a headache breaks across your brain in such a way to leave you nearly hyperventilating.  Every time I have had that happen (and it hasn't happened in a long time now, thank god), I've had to wake Sam.  Because I need someone to talk me down from and through the pain.  I knew that this wasn't normal.  I knew.  And I still did nothing, because I didn't want to be broken. 

But I'm still broken, and I don't know if I'm ever not going to be broken.  It's being managed.  I don't, for the most part, feel those things anymore.  But I have had two panic attacks in the last few months, so I don't think it's banished all the way.  I don't know if it ever will be.  But remember, it's pathological.  You can't help me by telling me that it's irrational.  You can't help me by being rational about it.  You, in fact, can't do anything to help.  There is aloneness, too, in how it's fought, this battle.

I'm fine.  I'm going to keep being fine, I hope.  I just thought it might be time to "come out".