Today I am going to back-track a little bit. It is definitely going to be a much less cheery tale then what was yesterday. I am going to go back to about a month ago. For about two weeks in October when my life seemed to suck the big one. It all started with a series of unfortunate events that almost lead to my undoing.
Since I was in about sixth grade I have been fighting my own inner demons. I told you last time that I have social anxiety and that coupled with unofficial depression. I know I really shouldn’t be self-diagnosing myself with depression, but I know it’s there, it runs in the family and I have been fighting it off for a while now. Being homesick didn’t help my state of mind.
But I am getting off track…
Like I said, I have been fighting my inner demons since sixth grade. As much as people may or may not have noticed I silently went crazy in middle school, I was pretty good at hiding it from my family because they were all too busy with their own problems. As for hiding it from my friends, I guess I was never around them long enough for them to notice.
But I let it get to me, everything. So much was going on in my life that I felt helpless, I felt lost and alone but I am a stronger person because of it. I took so measures to protect myself then I fought my way back to a better place, where I had been before everything started sucking in my life. For a long time I was OK. No one knew the struggle I had went through and I kept it that way for a long time. It wasn’t until my junior and senior years in high school that I started to become more and more open about middle school.
College changed everything. For the first month and a halfish, I did really well at staying open. Then I feel like things went to hell for my mental state. While most people had went home once or twice since the start of school, I was still stuck in Grand Forks, stuck on campus, stuck in the dorms. My niece had been born and the most I got was a bunch of pictures and a Skype and to top it all off I was facing feelings I had never really felt before.
My feelings were probably the weirdest thing I faced, and the thing that really drove me crazy. I am in an Acting One class with a bunch of hockey players and one of them played for the Fighting Sioux Men’s Team, which needless to say, I thought was really cool. The part that really drove me nuts was I couldn’t stop thinking about. He wouldn’t leave my fuckin brain and it drove me nuts. I couldn’t help but overthink and freak out about everything. The weirdest part, I had never really talked to him, like maybe once or twice, but nothing overly awesome to make me have a ‘crush’ on him or anything. In the end, as bad as it may sound I think I liked the idea of him more than anything. Because as soon as I even thought he had a girlfriend, it didn’t even faze me. It made it 10Xs easier to forget about him and I moved on.
But for about three weeks, it drove me nuts. But let me tell you, after three weeks of freaking out and getting myself ready for it, when I finally spoke to him…I felt like GOD!!! You can laugh all you want, because I said exactly six words to him, but that was enough for me to ride a giddy high for about a week. I think was the best out of all of it was, I was super proud of myself that despite of almost having a heart attack I kind of faced my fears that day…that was when things started to look up.
Before then, that was a different story.
Since I had been battling my inner-demons for a long time, I had found a weird sort of support through my family and friends, through my entire surroundings, that’s pretty natural though. Being away was the hardest thing I have ever done. Through the years, I had become so dependent on the people and things around me, that it was terrifying to go out on my own without that support system.
I did really well for the first month and a half but I finally crashed. But I refused to let anyone around me see that I was falling fast. I started to block off everything I could. I was afraid that if I became too close with anyone in NoDak (North Dakota), that they would hurt me just like I had been hurt before. I was afraid that any sort of rejection I would go crazy again, that I would be like I was in seventh grade. I refuse to go back there. Blocking everyone off made me feel even more isolated and depressed and it was part of the reason it took me three weeks to talk to the guy mentioned above. I was terrified that if he rejected me in any way, shape or form, I would be done. I couldn’t do that, I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn’t go back to where I was.
I don’t know how I pulled myself back again, but I did. I think what really helped is finding a bit of a support system here in NoDak. It really helped when I found people who seem to actually care.
I have to back track to my family and friends in Montana. We aren’t the touchy feely kind of people. I mean we can tell each other shit, but we don’t really share our feelings a lot. It’s not a bad thing, I treasure every one of my friends and family, but, it was nice to find friends who kind of are a little more…girly.
It really helped when one of the girls I met here, Nicole, reassured me that I’m not like Parker (he is pretty the person who drives everyone nuts and invites himself along places he isn’t really wanted). I was really afraid of being like him, but she assured me that I am not and then so did one of the guys we hang out with, Andy. Both Andy and Nicole told me they were glad that I had come out with the group and then assured me that I was nothing close to Parker. I then told them that I have social anxiety, this was something new for me. I’m not really a ‘talker’ much more of a listener, but now I felt like I could trust them, that they wouldn’t judge me because of me not being really social, it was probably one of the best things that has happened to me since I got to UND.
So I’ll leave you with what I learned from my most recent ‘cycle’ of depression. No matter what is going on, you are never as alone as you feel. I never really thought Nicole and Andy would be the ones I really trusted first, but they were. Comfort can be found in the most interesting places and in the most interesting ways. And remember, you’re stronger then you think, I promise.
-Crysta
P.S. About the guy I was talking about earlier, I was mistaken…I am attracted to him, for whatever reason I definitely am.
No comments:
Post a Comment