Oh My GAD!

When the Road Runner would do his running thing to get away from the coyote, he ran so fast that the world around him looked blurry.  It looked blurry why? Because the road runner was running super fast.

When you get on a plane and watch the lines on the runway as it's taking off, things get a little intense with the speed man, I'm telling ya.  What is normally a series of white lines in succession quickly becomes one white line that follows along until the plane leaves the ground. 

With GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), all things are possible.  Fast running or flying planes not required.  The world around can look just as blurry because the surroundings are moving on... while GAD helps with the sort-of-stuck in this ethereal funk-of-frozen feeling.  It can be debilitating when it's chronic. 

GAD is a sort of umbrella term used to encompass various forms of anxiety.  Whether PTSD or Agoraphobia, the "G" for generalized is intentional and on purpose. 

Anxiety is a normal happenstance for the human race.  It's when the anxiety actually manifests itself in a way that prohibits or prevents normal participation in society that it becomes the disorder.  I can tell you from first hand experience that it's scary shit... on a number of levels.

Even as a young kid I think I was a sort of restless girl, wanting to be doing something, ANYTHING, other than what I was doing.  This flowed over into my teen age years, where I longed for the "ideal" high school experience (like something out of GREASE or maybe The Babysitter's Club), and yet felt so socially awkward and uncomfortable.  I felt angsty and insecure and all kinds of stuff that I didn't have the words for nor could I really put a finger on it.

Fast forwarding a few years, I found myself in Undergrad and Graduate School on this weird emotional and spiritual roller coaster where all of the sudden I'm in this pool of "Churched" people (that is the precise language I heard used), therefore obviously quantifying me as an "Un-Churched" person (i.e. different and/or lacking in some way). 

It seemed that everything about my life is changing as grandparents die and the world keeps turning.  Funerals and term papers I would say.  Troubles on the home front 3 hours away while I'm practicing my Greek and writing about the Trinity. 

The OH MY GAD grandma panic attack occurred while I was home visiting from college.  I had the very real sensation that I was leaving my body.  I couldn't breathe.  My hands drew up in fists and I lost some serious motor function.  I was driving and somehow safely pulled myself across 3 lanes of traffic to safety on the shoulder.  I was scared.  I was embarrassed.  I felt humiliated.  And to add to the shame, I couldn't pull myself together enough to drive myself home.  I actually had to ask for help... it was like putting on an invisibility cloak of a different sort.  All of my vulnerabilities exposed and no where to hide.

Anxiety can be a really great laxative.

Thankful for the quiet assurance from my brother Jason, I made it home and locked myself in my room for a few hours.  Just allowed the embarrassment and fear stew for a bit because that always helps.  And knowing that my parents' humble home was filled to the brim with visiting family members just added to this ghastly pressure cooker. 

"You had a panic attack."  The doctor said.  Immediately I started crying and immediately felt ashamed that I immediately started crying.  The doctor immediately questioned why I put so many feelings on top of feelings.  At this point, I'm sure the snot had made it from my nostril to my upper lip and she finally handed me a tissue.  I couldn't really talk between the hyper-ventilating breaths. 
"Here, take some Paxil." 

Awesome. 

Paxil made me nuts.  For a year I could not drive.  I had a car.  I had a license.  I physically could not drive.  Sitting behind the wheel tipped me over into another frenzied panic, with the manifestations of dizziness, sweaty palms (which I typically have on a normal basis... gross I know), and tightening of the chest.  Here I was, in the world of academia shooting for my masters degree, and I couldn't drive?  Give me a break.  You see how this is a struggle?  A cycle?  It's like an incessant game of "Let's upstage the last failure!" 


All of those little arrows are telling
that kid that he sucks at life. 

Zoloft happened and it helped.  No issue with public speaking and now driving to and from the gym.  But sometimes the walls still breathed and I felt dizzy.  Sometimes my knees felt like they would buckle and I felt the desire to hurry up and hide. 

I decided that I didn't need any "help and stopped taking Zoloft.  I found myself laying on a couch and waiting for someone to shoot me.  I don't recommend doing that.  Ever.

And sometimes I have really awesome
 lightning storms in my head. 

At the age of 34 I still wrestle with this GAD business.  I'm more familiar with it and have learned to give myself some grace and patience.  But man, when it happens it's so draining.  It becomes a grappling match (sort of like MMA), between my own internal dialogue based on anxiety and my own internal dialogue based on tools I've learned.  It does not define me (like many other things), but it is part of what makes Rachel the unique and wonderful Rachel she is. 

Right?

Despite that fact that no one really knows what the Citalopram is actually doing to my body long term, I'll continue taking it like a good little girl to properly function in a way that society expects from me.  After all, it's a legal substance and some pharmacy somewhere is making big bank off of GAD.  It's just another way I can contribute to society. 

And that makes me want to vomit.

See all those Benjamins? Those really should be
going towards my student loans.  THAT would
help me with anxiety.  Punks.