Travel Anxiety - Arizona

Albuquerque to Arizona by Amtrak.

I wake up in Flagstaff Arizona, but momentarily I forget where I am.

It's the first time I've had more than 4 hours sleep in days. 

The second I open my eyes it's there. 

I can feel it buzzing in my chest. 

It's loud today. Shit.

I curl my body in tightly towards my ribs, attempting to stifle the buzzing. 

I try to catch my brain - where am I? Am I supposed to be somewhere? Was I supposed to be awake for the sunrise??  Am I missing out on something amazing?? Have I fucked up the entire day???

Fuck, shit. Shit. I've fucked up somehow, Oh I know it.

Woah, no, okay slow down there brain. Try again.

It's 8:15am. I'm in Arizona. I don't have to be anywhere yet. 

Good. That's good. 

So what am I doing today? 

Picking up a hire car. Oh fuck. 

The very thought of driving makes my stomach flip. 

Try not to think about it. 

I'll deal with it when it happens.

I can smell burning toast. 

I should get up. 

Nope. 

Can't. 

Not yet anyway.

This mattress is hard. 

I usually don't mind a firm mattress but my body is aching. My camera bag alone is 8kg+ and I carry it on my shoulders every day. The thin straps dig in to me, but I dare not leave it at my accommodation. That's when the magic happens - when you leave your camera behind.

I remind myself that all of this is my choice.

Being here.

Being here by myself.

The hire car.

The annoyingly heavy camera bag.

The occasional 3am starts (I went up in a hot air balloon).

I chose all of this for myself because at some point, I assumed I was capable. 

I latch on to that thought as my stomach continues to twist itself in knots. 

Travelling is hard for a person like me. 

Travelling takes a lot of energy. 

At times I can't even find the energy at home to get out of bed.

But at some point, I believed myself capable. 

So I suppose I better not let that version of myself down. I don't want to disappoint her. 

Okay, I can get out of bed now.

A small attack.

I had a small panic attack at my work yesterday. 

I was expecting something mildly unpleasant to happen, but I didn't know when. 

When it happened, I wasn't ready.

I suddenly couldn't catch my breath and started to shiver.

I tried to run away from nothing, in a small space, with nowhere to run at all.

I don't really remember. 

I blurted out something like "I can't" and started to cry.

Afterwards I felt embarrassed and disappointed in myself.

I have friends in my team who are empathetic, kind, patient and understanding.

But it is still a very awkward thing to have happen.

I was also very uncomfortably sweaty for the rest of the day.  

How to have an anxiety attack.

Well, there are a couple of different ways to have yourself an anxiety attack, here's one I'm quite good at, in three easy steps:

Now when I feel the beginning of an attack, I try my best to keep my breathing steady. 
I remind myself I'm not dying, and I focus on breathing. I think that's the key.

Rooms full of people. Why am I in them?

Social Anxiety

I haven't been socialising well lately.
I've been forcing myself to go out because when I stay home I feel sad and lonely.
But when I'm out and I'm surrounded by people ...I still feel sad and lonely. Maybe even more so?

Sometimes people are nice to me, and they start to talk to me, and I forget how to be a person.
I stare at them strangely and furrow my eyebrows and try to answer their very simple questions like "how are you?" and "what do you do?" and "how do you know Felicity?" and I just get flustered and end up saying something utterly strange.

Then, I apologise for being a bit strange and I try to assure them that I used to be able to answer such simple questions, in a timely manner, and sometimes even with borderline charm!...but by this point I'm rambling, which just makes me seem stranger.

I sneak up on myself.

Age 11, Treading water. Age 12, Drowning.

Age 11.

I find it harder to settle at night.

As soon as the night starts to go quiet I feel nauseas.

The quieter my surroundings, the louder my thoughts, the more my stomach turns.

The doctor tells my Mum I have an anxiety disorder.

Age 12.

Sometimes during the day, I find myself suddenly unable to take a breath.

I realise at that second that I never really learn to breathe. It just happens.

I try to remember how, but there's no memory of a lesson on how to breathe. 

It's just supposed to happen. 

So when it suddenly stops happening, an overwhelming dread takes over my body.

I'm dying. 

I'm standing in the middle of the street, drowning.

This is a sensation I will experience for years to come.

These are my panic attacks.

Thank you Caitlin (pictured)

You don't even realise you're in there!

Negative self talk is a nasty fucking sneaky habit.

After a good batch of therapy (strongly recommend) I was able to start recognising the cruel messages I told myself daily.

I was SO cruel.

Rebekah you're useless. Why do you even try? 

Just give up. 

Stop wasting space. 

Rebekah you're ugly.

people can't stand to be around you

 because you're annoying and stupid 

and no one will ever love you, 

because as I said, you're ugly.

Rebekah you're a failure.

Stupid, Ugly, Useless, Failure.

Once my mum said to me: 

"Would you ever say these things to your best friend?"

No! Never! Of course not! That's horrible! I would never say those things to anyone!

"So why do you say them to yourself?"

Get out of my bathtub and out of my head (part 2-Anxiety)

Click to embiggen
pt 1 - depression (Blarry)

Anxious Head: Getting carried away.

click image to embiggen

How are you feeling?

Stop it, you're killing it :'(

The Ramblings.

Hello, 

I would just like you to know that I have been posting on this blog as a retrospective experience of anxiety and depression. I have been living depression free for 5 years! The anxiety I have had since I was 12, and I have been living with and managing it ever since. 

Unfortunately, this year the depression returned, like a punch in the head.

Over the last couple of months, I have been writing down the thoughts I've been having that I don't usually have. 

The way I think when I'm depressed scares me. But I've documented some of the obscure thoughts here. With some pictures. So... yay?

I don't usually like wordy things unless they're funny. But whatever.


I went to Brunswick last night.
I came home with the following things:

• 1 Big blue vase, 
• 1 Darth Vader shirt for Joey
  (Joey calls Darth Vader "The Captain", I don't know why. It's cute though)
• 1 bottle of eyedrops
• 1 box of antidepressants

It's been a week since I did this and I haven't started taking them yet because I am just too frightened.

~

Last week, I saw one of those little brown sparrows (the ones that are always in shopping centre food courts) lying dead on the ground.
On the side of the footpath in the city, just under a tree with a thin trunk.

• Initial feelings of sadness for the very small bird, alone on the path in the city... 
• overwhelming sense of mortality.

• Imagine my own little body lying dead under the thin-trunked tree, lying on my side, my talons curled up, people just walkin' by, in their suits.
• Stomach ache.

~

My flatmate was trying to justify buying an expensive new phone when his friend said "In a thousand years, none of this will mean anything, nothing will matter" which made my flatmate feel better about buying an expensive phone.

I adapted this into my daily worries. Whenever I become uncontrollably anxious about something, I tell myself "in a thousand years, the stress I feel right now will be so irrelevant to everything, so why does it feel like the biggest, scariest, life changing, universe-altering thing ever?" Basically, I'm trying to put things in perspective, you know, not worry so much about the little things.

Then I become overwhelmed by the idea that I mean nothing, and if I just die it wouldn't matter. Because in a thousand years my existence won't mean SHIT.

~

Jaw clenched so hard, teeth could explode.
Body tremors like a human earthquake.

Body wants to cry, body wants to vomit.
Body hasn't got the energy and won't produce a single tear or slightest bile.
It's like needing to sneeze, but you can't get it out, and then you make this horrible face and you twist your nose in a funny way.

Then numbness, except for a very dull ache in my head.

These thoughts aren't my regular thoughts and yet they're in my head.

The overstayed welcome.

Get off meeee

uh, EVERYTHING.

Social Anxiety:

Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it in my gut. All the time.

Worrying.

What "trying to stay calm" feels like.

Major Anxiety Trigger