My Journey with Chronic Illness: Generalized Anxiety
Or, my life with the asshole cousin of the mental illness community
The thing about anxiety is it can come on when you least expect it. That’s what it did with me. Or did it?
It’s like a stealthy ninja fighting with tools like panic attacks and self doubt instead of weapons or fancy moves. Often, symptoms fly out of nowhere giving you no option but to retreat — until you seek treatment.
Then you start fighting back.
As a kid, I had “fragile nerves.”
I was the kid who could never relax. I was always curled up in a tight ball, not able to just stretch out over the furniture, loose and limber. I wanted to be close to family.
Getting upset brough on weird symptoms like numbness in my heels, in the backs of my knees, or across the palm of my hands.
I had nightmares, but what kid doesn’t?
Was it because I was a divorced kid doing the two-parents-who-fought-all-the-time shuffle? Or maybe it was because I was in advanced classes at school and happened to be wired as a perfectionist. The doctors didn’t know. I’m sure they cared, but all of my tests came back fine, so there wasn’t a big need to keep digging for a cause.
