Author:Maura BranniganUpdated:Oct 17, 2018Original:Apr 2, 2018When I was in fourth grade, I realized I could not, for lack of a better phrase, see shit. It occurred to me abruptly, in the middle of a math lesson. My table was in the mid-back of the classroom, and as my teacher was doing whatever she was doing on the overhead projector, I began panicking when things I should have been able to read appeared blurry, like someone had sneakily slid Vaseline over my eyeballs at recess.
Like so many people with anxiety, or with depression, or with any number of mood disorders, I find my security in plans. I've never met a list I didn't just devour. And as with so many others, my anxiety is often triggered when I'm thrown off schedule. When I sense my symptoms — sometimes mental, like a weird, morose dread, or sometimes physical, like shortness of breath or stomach knots — I take comfort in pattern.
Related ArticlesWhen Does a T-Shirt Become So Much More Than a T-Shirt?How My First Date Uniform Taught Me to Be MyselfWhat Does Adolescence Smell Like? My relationship with fashion and beauty products has helped me cope. And over the years, I've accumulated a collection of stuff — skin-care, aromatherapy, supplements, whatever — that I've turned to time and again to make me feel in control.
Last winter posed a new kind of challenge. None of my regular tricks seemed to do what I needed them to do. Neither did the calendar-planning, nor the additional pages of lists I scribbled in an attempt to coax myself into stillness. I felt lost, and disheartened, and guilty for feeling any of it. I felt guilty for being rattled when I knew so many others had it much worse than I did. I felt guilty for comparing my own anxiety to that of others, when my mental health was mine and mine alone.
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