Here comes the train again, or do you call it the roller coaster? Maybe is just a Me thing, never heard this saying from others but myself. Here comes the daily, sometimes hourly, train of anxiety. It comes unannounced, it passes and sometimes I don’t even realize it till is too late.
No longer than a week ago I found myself having an anxiety attack during a stream. I have never experienced this before, yes, I have had low anxiety on streams here and there, but an anxiety attack? No. The worst part is that I didn’t even realized it, it felt like forever but all of a sudden I felt lightheaded, hot and nauseous, I took a deep breath as a reflex since I have noticed I stopped breathing without even realizing. I was gaming on stream, and even though I was playing okay, my mind was so far gone; it was like my body was there, but you could tell from my face how I went from laughing to completely gone, like an empty home. I took a deep breath, and it took me about a minute for the physical symptoms to go away, once I have snapped out of it, but I only know it took one minute because I went back to the recorded live… In my brain time slowed down, and it felt like forever. I just wanted to cry and throw up. As a streamer I have mastered to fake my emotions pretty good, even though I can see the difference when I go back to the video, I know my viewers couldn’t tell, it could have easily pass as “sorry guys, I’m too focused” and maybe throw a cute laugh in the mix.
My community knows I take Overwatch pretty serious, been trying to get Silver Rank for sometime now. I decided to tell the truth, because I deeply believe mental health needs to be taken more seriously and secondly, because I want to give some kind of hope to those who like me, suffer from it; to let them see that having a sick brain shouldn’t hold you back from living, and not just surviving.
I find myself unable to sleep nor eat; or when I'm able to, it usually follows up with morning anxiety or an upset stomach. Coming back to the same thoughts; "I can do this! Duh, why would I even doubt myself?" to "What the fuck was I thinking? I can't do this, this is too hard", and so on. A downfall spiral. I want to get out of bed and conquer the world how I once did, but when I stand up, I just want to crawl into bed again. Is this the new normal? Or will I be able to get back to myself in time again? I think everyday I get this, and I quote myself ‘train of anxiety’, but I have created a coping mechanism, and one of the oldest advice we always get, ‘take a deep breath, sweetheart’, my body by now does it naturally as a reflex. Believe it or not, sometimes when I find myself taking a deep breath is the moment that I actually notice my brain has been trying to run away again. Usually I follow it with other coping mechanism like grounding myself to what’s real and what I have to worry about right now and not to go wonder about the scary future, or mourning my past. I'm definitely trying my best, to drag myself again out of the darkness.
If you have already read my first and previous post, ‘I’m moving again!!! But who’s counting?’ you can see how I can get easily trigger hourly at this phase of my life. I want to be excited and stay strong, stay positive of what’s to come, to believe in myself, since well, I have proven that I'm so much more capable than I think. But here we are. I find myself mourning the good, the pieces of happiness and peace I have gotten in the last year, because not all was bad. Here I find myself crying again, but hey, ‘time will heal you’ they say, right? So toughen up, because everyone is going through something.
I’m so angry, but at whom? I just want to numb the pain, you know? I don’t want to end it. Let’s put it like this, when you have a cavity, you take pain killers for the pain, before going to get it fixed, right? Or when you have the flu, you take pain killers to ease the pain and wait it out till your body recovers. Well… I know I will be okay again, better than before, but for now, it hurts. Healing, is not linear.
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