I have been struggling lately. It’s been a slow descent into madness, but I can feel it like a snowball that’s picking up steam as it rolls downhill. It’s weird though, it isn’t like any bout of depression I’ve ever experienced before, at least not that I can remember.
I don’t even know if I could call it depression. I don’t know what it is exactly.
There are moments where I’m gripped by this crippling anxiety. Others when I feel like I need to break down and cry for no reason at all. But it’s not the same as in the past when there was this deep, abiding sadness inside that felt completely insurmountable.
To be honest, whatever this is feels much more like I’m going crazy than actual depression. I feel like I know depression, but this? This I don’t know.
We went to Maui a few weeks back and I actually ended up in the ER because of some leg pain that an urgent care doctor told me to “just” (I put just in quotes because apparently in Maui there is no such thing as a simple ER visit – seriously avoid at all costs, they are TERRIBLE) go get scanned, just in case. The scan turned out fine but I had a horrible anxiety attack that shot my blood pressure up to previously unseen levels.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful but since then I’ve been finding new things to ruminate on. Mostly all centered around me dying of cancer. Yesterday I had a mole biopsied that grew at some point in the last two years. The derm I saw said she would be surprised if it turned out to be anything but I’m still having a lot of difficulty convincing myself to stop googling everything I can about melanoma and completely freaking myself out.
On a rational level I’m completely on board with the fact that I’ve done all I can at this point and can only wait now. I get that my anxiety now that I’ve gone to the doctor, gotten the biopsy, is not productive anxiety. I get it. But I can’t stop it. And I can’t stop worrying about every other little ache or pain that I feel. I rubbed this lump (that two doctors have now told me is just a lipoma) until it turned red and started to hurt. Then I started freaking out that it was red and hurting.
Yeah. Crazy. I know.
I made an appointment to see my obgyn because I feel the need to have a breast check and a papsmear all of the sudden.
I think like most people I’ve had my share of Google induced health freak outs, but nothing to this degree before. I seriously wonder if I’ve become a diagnosable hypochondriac at this point.
Make me broken
So I can be healed
Cause I’m so callous
And now I can’t feel
I wanna run to You
With heart wide open
Make me broken
The one good thing that has come out of this intensely anxious state of mind is the realization that I need God. And I’ve been in this place where He hasn’t been a priority or even an after thought a lot of the times, and that’s really sad. I don’t know how I keep ending up here in the same place. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to prioritize Him in my life. But I have to take actual steps towards fixing that. So that’s what I’m trying to do.
In the meantime, if you pray, please pray for my mental state. Because although I sound reasonably not-crazy in this post (or maybe I sound REALLY crazy and just don’t know it because I’m that far over the edge), something is definitely really wrong with me right now.