A Year Ago, I Had To Check Myself Into The Hospital Due To Severe Anxiety And Depression

Hey everyone. As I'm sure you have all seen (weaved throughout all the stock tweets) it is #BellLetsTalk day. For every applicable text, call, tweet, TikTok video using #BellLetsTalk, Bell donates 5¢ more towards mental health initiatives. In honor of that, I wanted to share something that I wrote a little over a year ago regarding my personal battle with mental illness. I am appreciative to Coley for allowing me to do so here, as I know this is primarily a comedy site and this obviously does not fall into this category. Here that is.

I was laying in bed, as I had been for the last eight hours or so, my pillow was soaked with tears, my mattress was sheetless (as it had been for over three weeks as I just couldn’t muster up the willpower to put them back on), when I had the scariest thought I’ve ever experienced. I caught myself actively thinking that I just wished I just would cease to exist. I wasn’t actively making plans to hurt myself, but through hyperventilated breaths I was just desperately wishing I could not be here anymore.

Now I have experienced some pretty hellacious panic attacks over the course of the last couple years, but this reached a point that was unfamiliar to me. Had I been that rundown before? Sure. Had I been that overtired, exhausted, sad, anxious? Absolutely. But the thoughts that I felt washing over me, quickly, were debilitating and scary. I didn’t want to burden anyone, say call my mom in the middle of the night or wake my roommates who had to wake up for work just a few moments later, and I truly didn’t know what to do.

Some backstory, I’ve been suffering from clinical depression and generalized anxiety for a very long time, but diagnosed for the last two years. After a year of therapy followed by a move and relocation, I put off finding a new therapist for over a year. Why, you ask? Probably because, like many depressed/anxious people, I find doing practically anything, especially anything directly having an impact on my personal mental health incredibly overwhelming to the point where I become nauseous, even more anxious and then just scrap the idea all together. I finally found a therapist recently, but my terrible medical insurance was still charging me $200 per weekly session and (this may be hard to believe) but an associate social media editor’s salary isn’t exactly capable of supporting that type of payment (or half of that payment) ((or a fifth of that payment)). Me and this therapist (who is also a psychiatrist) discussed putting me on medicine soon, and as nervous as that made me, I finally felt like some of my fears about how I was feeling about myself could be assuaged.

I wrote in my notes app on my phone on March 11, 2019: “I can feel myself slipping and spiraling again. I am so unhappy and I don’t know what to do about it.” Eight months later and I am still feeling the same way. I have been crying myself or hyperventilating myself to sleep 3–5 times a week, I work from home as much as possible, I avoid social interaction at all costs. I have great friends, great family, great co-workers (less now thanks to recent layoffs which certainly haven’t helped). But it doesn’t matter. Depression doesn’t discriminate, and neither does anxiety.

So now back to two weeks ago when I stood up, got out of bed, called an Uber, and went to the closest hospital I could find. This was the hardest decision that I have ever had to make in my life. I felt so weak, so useless, so embarrassed that I couldn’t just close my eyes and sleep through it. Is anything in my life really that bad? No, it really isn’t, but that isn’t the point. The doctors were kind, I saw a psychiatrist who was on staff. They identified that I was not in immediate danger of harming myself or others, they gave me some anti-anxiety medicine (first time for that, highly recommend), they gave me the names of some psychiatrists that would be more affordable in my price range, and a kind doctor, whose name I no longer even remember, looked me in the eyes and said “Please help yourself to get better. Please.”

Finding a therapist, getting help, getting better seems like it wouldn’t be too hard a thing to do. Why would someone want to be sad or want to be anxious? No one does. Sure, there is certainly an issue in our current society with romanticizing mental health issues, but at their core everyone wants to get better. But feeling like you deserve to get better? Like this isn’t just going to be who you are forever and that you deserve to feel this way? That is the daily battle.

So, there isn’t really a happy ending to this story (yet), but I do hope that we start at least heading toward one soon. I have a new therapist now who I will be meeting with next week and will hopefully get this medicine situation figured out. I can eat without anxiously vomiting for the first time in a month, which is a step in the right direction.

I wasn’t planning on writing about this, or even thinking about it, but I know how much so many people have told me that me writing about these things helps them feel more comfortable about what they are dealing with, so I hope maybe this will too. Figured #WorldMentalHealthDay (#BellLetsTalk day) was the right day to do so.

A lot has changed since I wrote this in October 2019. I am in what I would consider a better place now. Is every single day sunshine and rainbows? Of course not. The ups and downs are still ever-present, but I am certainly better off and working on it in a way that would make that version of myself I saw that night a bit prouder. I have posted this on social media dozens of times, but if anyone ever has any questions about therapy, mental illness, getting help, or anything in this world at all, never, ever hesitate to reach out via DM. This burden is way too fucking big to take on yourself.