#mentalillnessfeelslike

#mentalillnessfeelslike 
It's one thing to be worried, but it's another thing to spend hours of your day agonizing over your drive home because you will have to hold up traffic to make a left turn on a single lane road with no stop sign or traffic light no matter how many alternate routes you've tried to come up with.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

Since recently coming to the realization that something is not quite right with myself and seeking out treatment, I have been trying to piece together my history with anxiety. Though I didn't know it was not normal back then, my earliest memories of this pattern of thinking started about 10-12 years ago. It didn't cross my mind that this might not be normal behavior until about 6 years ago when I moved out of my father's house and started doing things on my own I never had to do before or never had to do ALONE before. There was grocery shopping and laundromats and gas stations! I would go out to run errands as early in the morning or as late in the night as possible. I hated traffic. I hated people. I hated anyone being in my way and I hated being in anyone else's way. So much so, I would have cash and change ready in hand while I was still five full carts behind in line. If I didn't, I would go into a panic trying to get my money out fast enough.

"Oh my god, the man behind me is SO irritated with me right now. I'm taking too long. I have a $20 in here. Why is it stuck?! What is wrong with me?!?! Shit, don't make eye contact with him! Now you're a weirdo who can't pay for her fucking groceries. What is wrong with you?? Dammit, Daena. Take your change and go home and think about what you've done."

And I would. For hours. Sometimes I would replay the same incident over and over again for days. Sometimes I would try and do it differently in my head to have a better outcome, but it always ended up as worst case scenario. Worst case scenario was usually the person behind me rolling their eyes, me apologizing, and them going on about what a loser I was or just yelling at me for being a waste of space.

This still happens. I still do this. I don't know how I would have survived without the invention of self checkout. I would rather go through a self checkout line with 3 things 7 nights a week than go through an actual line with a full cart of groceries once a week. I would go almost a whole month without doing any actual grocery shopping. I would stop eating dinner because I didn't have food but I couldn't bring myself to go out and buy anything.

What if someone sees me looking clueless and lost trying to find the pasta aisle and starts laughing at me? What if they go home and talk about me at dinner? 

"There was this idiot girl and the store. She had no idea what she was doing! Who let her out of the house?! She was wearing these awful jeans that were all gross at the bottom and her t-shirt and sweater did NOT go together at all. And who has a center part anymore? Goodness, girl, get your shit together. And don't get me started on the shoes. Anyways, she was so dumb she went down the same aisle three times before she actually saw the pasta sauce she was looking for. It was right at eye level the whole time! What a dummy."

Every time these unwelcome worries passed through my brain, my blood gets hot. I can feel it through my whole body in a matter of seconds. My arms get heavy and slightly numb. My heart is racing so fast I think it's going to explode right inside my chest. My head starts pounding and pulsing like there's actually too much going on inside there to fit. The thoughts running through it are too fast to even comprehend them all. It turns into a big heavy blob sitting stagnant at the base of my skull. Sometimes it passes in seconds. Sometimes it lasts for hours.

Thanks to good ol WebMD, I thought maybe I had some sort of paranoia disorder. I talked to my parents about it and while I don't remember exactly what was said, I remember feeling defeated and embarrassed. I remember feeling like I was crazy and selfish. Everybody worries about things! Just stop thinking about them! I wanted to go see a doctor but then I felt like that was silly and they'd laugh at me, too.

The grocery store is only one of my many irrational fears. I kept most of them to myself out of fear of being told I was dumb or irrational or being laughed at. I know they're irrational, but the thoughts keep happening anyway. A close friend who has experience with mental illness pointed out some things to me and suggested I seek help. I am also fortunate enough to be involved with a partner that was not afraid to point out this wasn't normal either once I started expressing some of the worries out loud, trying to explain my strange behavior. It was going to be detrimental to many of my relationships if I did not find help.

I've barely started any sort of treatment and I don't officially have any sort of diagnosis. I don't know what will happen or what will change or how long it will take, but I took step one. Just a doctor validating that I was, in fact, not normal was the biggest relief off my shoulders. Maybe someday, hopefully soon, I will be able to go to that grocery store during the busiest hour and walk through that line with my heaping cart of groceries and take my sweet time digging for that nickel in the bottom of my purse.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned

For the last three years, I have spent Mother’s Day as a food server in a corporate owned chain steakhouse. Mother’s Day was, and I’m sure will forever continue to be, the busiest day of the year. This day is the ultimate test of true strength in any position at a restaurant. This is what Valentine’s Day weekend prepared you for. The air of the kitchen is heavy with tension as soda cases are changed, appetizers are burning, and overloaded trays of buttered potatoes are melting. There are more elbows and hips to bump than usual as holidays are over staffed in both the kitchen and dining room to “better serve the needs to the guests.”* Even the best of the best would find it difficult to exercise self-restraint with an unruly table or a selfish coworker.

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2013 was my first Mother’s Day as a food server. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what to expect. I don’t remember much of the shift or the days leading up to it, but I do remember how my night ended.