A lovely girl who used 625points during her Leaving Cert suggested that she would write about her experience “of dealing with some depression and a lot of anxiety throughout the year (the guilt attached, the comparison – I don’t intend to diagnose, I just know how beneficial it would’ve been for me to read about someone like me in the same position)”. I thought that it’s super helpful for people to hear a real story told in a candid way and remember that they’re not alone in feeling anxious. Here it is:
*Disclaimer – I am speaking from my own personal experience and do not intend for this article to be taken as absolute truth across the board.
Endings happen everyday. The book is closed, the curtains are drawn, the light flickers into darkness. The timeline of my life is marked with beginnings and endings, as you do not get one without the other- but some stand taller on my timeline than others.
The snowball of my mental health started rolling downhill when I entered third year, and didn’t slow for a couple of years. Without getting into the gorey details of the ins-and-outs of why and who and how and where, I can divulge this.
Anxiety is really, really fickle.
The way I describe it to people that don’t experience it is having an extreme restlessness for something that they wouldn’t think twice about. From 3rd to 6th year, my anxiety was through the roof. I experienced panic attacks to the point that I couldn’t go to school, from which stemmed extreme guilt.
I feel like anxiety has stolen moments from me. Some happy, some mundane- either way, those moments should’ve been my own to experience outside of the panic attack I was probably having at the time. The innumerable classes, bus journeys, public spaces I have been in, not able to fully experience the moment because of this insurmountable tenseness. To be hindered by something during such an important time, something from within myself, meant I became somewhat of my own worst enemy. Especially as I was aiming for very high points.
It was in 6th year during the Easter holidays, the days you’re meant to be getting a big bulk of work done, getting your head ready for orals that begin next week and seriously buckling down for the next couple of months, when I had one of my longest depressive episodes.
The study plan, needless to say, went out the window with my emotional and mental stability.
The inexplicable weakness and tiredness burrowed it’s way into my being for the foreseeable future- the guilt following closely behind.
Low moments manifest in different ways. For me, it looked like lethargy and a complete lack of emotion or motivation. It looked like not being able to go to the bathroom, or even cross my room without feeling lightheaded and weak. I would convince myself that I just had the flu or a cold until denial became futile. It looked like missed days and weeks at school, half days and lower grades than they ‘should’ve’ been. And I never knew when I would come out of this dark spell. Riding the wave was all I could do, along with talking to friends and professionals along the way.
My innocence ended when my anxiety began, like that part of my life handed the baton on for the next part to take over the marathon. I wanted to write this article because I had great people around me when I was going through one of the most important periods of my life, but some people are not as fortunate. If you relate to this article, please remember this:
- There is life after the Leaving – good things you can’t even fathom right now because you’re under the rainy cloud of the exams.
- Everything passes. Your panic attack will pass. Your low spell will pass. Your bad grade will pass. This is a good thing.
- You cannot help the fact that your brain may be working against you right now, so there is absolutely no utility in dismissing it. Let yourself feel, but do not sit in it – talk to someone. There is a reason people say this all the time. It helps. Two heads really are better than one. There is always someone who wants to help. I have called helplines before- there is no shame in this. Anyways, who will know?
- This is way more common than you know. You’re not crazy.
- Your best in any situation really is enough.
I have had anxiety for around three years by now. In that time, it has reshaped itself and found different moulds in which it feels the most comfortable to manifest, but fundamentally it is the same in the ways that it impacts my life on a ground level. My relationship with it is quite volatile and capricious – some days I can accept that it’s there and appreciate that it has matured me to some degree. And then some days I don’t want to leave the house as a result of it, and hate it for what it’s doing to me. Either way it’s there, so the way I see it – bow down to monster so it thinks it has won, then hit it where it hurts with something it wants least: help.
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