What did they know?

A person close to me told me I was allowing myself to become a victim?  That there was really nothing wrong with me that could not be fixed by just moving on, and that I was being overly dramatic.  The comments made me really angry.  What did he know? How did he know what it was like to be in this miserable state?  How did anyone know, who had not been here,  what it was like to live with anxiety day in and day out and feel totally out of control?

I thought I was trying everything I could think of to “get better.”  However, the comments coming to me reinforced my perception of shame and stigma that I associated with this “illness.”  I knew if I had told people that I had breast cancer their reactions would have been quite different.  But an anxiety disorder?  In my mind, they were saying, “Hey, that’s just bullshit.”  What did they know?

There was no way to explain to people what the pain felt like.  It was not the pain of having a broken arm, burned skin,  surgical stitches, any of which people could readily understand and relate.  But it was real pain.  For me, it started with debilitating back pains, for which I could find no relief.  Then came nausea, fatigue, and it continued with the worse pain of fear, paralyzing immobility, constant tears out of nowhere, the shakes, nervous tension, loss of appetite, extreme weight loss (there is an upside to everything), and inability to concentrate.  It was such an intangible set of conditions.  Then there was the pain of not understanding the cause.  Why me?  Why now?  And of course, the pain of not understanding that there was a road to health.  A road at the end of which there would be, once again, strength and happiness.

Advertisement