The worst months of my life
My experience suffering from anxiety
🏷️ Categories: Personal stories, Loneliness, Behavior.
This letter was never going to be written.
But thanks to a Mental Garden reader, here we are today.
I talk little about myself, yet something of my personality always creeps into every letter, but I don't usually write about my life. Today will be different. I want to talk to you about the first and only time I suffered from a mental health problem, a terrible few months when anxiety made me see the future very dark.
I hope you are well, but if you are going through a bad time, I want to remind you that even in the worst situations, there is hope to get through.
The calm before the storm
I had always considered myself a resilient and mentally strong person.
Like the world, I had gone through bad times and the occasional streak where I felt discouraged, but nothing strong enough to affect me in a serious and lasting way. My life in 2020 was fairly simple and predictable, I was finishing my university studies in geography and enjoyed my free time playing sports with friends and reading the occasional book.
Everything was predictable and pleasant, I was living a pleasant everyday life.
Meanwhile, the world was becoming unpredictable.
Perhaps too unpredictable.
Crumbling
On March 14, 2020, everything changed.
A virus that had begun months earlier to spread across Asia was spreading at breakneck speed and in an unstoppable manner. There were no measures or controls that could stop its advance. It was all so fast that in Spain, my country, on March 14, 2020, a state of alarm was declared and strict social isolation measures began, from one day to the next.
What at first were strange days turned into weeks, and then into months.
I quickly adapted to washing my hands until they were worn out, avoiding hugs and making distance a habit. All that was easy at the beginning, but as the months went by the “new normal” seemed to have no expiration date and I began to fall apart.
The uncertainty of not knowing what the future would be kept me from living.
I remember waking up many mornings hoping that something had changed, that maybe the nightmare would end soon, but the world remained the same. Or worse. The streets empty of life and all that sadness seeped inside me.
Anxiety
I wanted to escape from that suffocating routine, but there was no way out.
Eventually I began to have nervous moments: a knot in my stomach and recurring thoughts that I could not avoid. The problem went on and on, sometimes I couldn't sleep and sometimes I woke up with muscle pain.
“What's wrong with me?”
“How much longer will this last?”
“What if we never get back to normal?”
“Will I have caught it?”
I felt trapped, overwhelmed, worried, it was hard to put a name to what was happening to me, I didn't even know what to call it, I just knew I felt terrible.
When the restrictions began to be eased, I was terribly afraid of catching the virus and transmitting it to my family, especially to my older relatives, who were more at risk. I avoided social contact as much as possible and did not return to “normality” at all, living as isolated as I could. If I did not go out of the house I felt desperate when I imagined the future, but if I went out of the house I felt guilty just thinking that I could have been infected and, because of me, infect my environment.
I was cornered and desperate.
The exit
I couldn't take it anymore.
I had never felt anything like this before: the dizziness, the tightness in my chest? I could no longer ignore it. I decided to talk it over with one of the few friends with whom I had resumed face-to-face contact. It was hard for me to take the step and leave the house, but I did it.
I told him everything, everything I felt.
—“I didn't know you were going through this, you could have told me,” he said.
I had underestimated the importance of my feelings and mistakenly believed that others would not understand me. The conversation was a reality check, I realized how distorted I saw the world. Although the risk was still present, it was no longer the same as in those early days; we had come a long way. The world was beginning to regain a normalcy that I was refusing to experience.
That day the knot in my head began to untie.
My friend encouraged me to start coming out gradually. They were small steps, but I was losing my fear until, without realizing it, the anxiety disappeared. I went back to sleep, stopped the muscle aches, the tightness in my chest, the dizziness, the worry and the looping thoughts.
The storm had passed.
What hurt me most in the pandemic was not the virus, it was my own mind.
In retrospect
What I had suffered had a name: anxiety.
I had never been interested in psychology before and didn't even begin to appreciate the importance of mental health. It was because of this experience that I began to value psychology as a way to better understand ourselves. I was late, but months after overcoming anxiety, I began to put the pieces together and understand what had happened to me and how I had climbed out of that hole.
The pandemic made me want to learn more and more about psychology and is part of the reason why today, after several years, you are here reading this letter.
Never lose hope, even the worst storms cease.
✍️ Your turn: Have you ever suffered from anxiety? What was your experience like?
💭 Quote of the day: “Also, I realized that avoiding people didn't really alleviate any of my anxieties. Out there in the woods, I was still having to live with myself.” Val Emmich, Dear Evan Hansen.
See you soon, take care ♥️.
You are not alone. Thank you for sharing. That spring of 2020 brought the most dismal May I've ever experienced, and that's saying quite a bit because May had always been about light and renewal. Instead, that one was dark, hopeless, and humiliating. Stories of that time need to be told. Something sinister took root beyond the actual virus, and I think many of us are still trying exorcising the deep pain of it. But love and light did prevail. We are here now to share our stories.
I'm glad you recovered from your fear and anxiety. That was more of a pandemic that COVID and is still with us.
Jeff and I live in a rural neighborhood where everyone lives on an acre lot and a wind blows through the valley every afternoon. We could go outside, wave to neighbors as we drove by, and we even broke the rules by visiting our daughter and her husband. They got married during COVID. The wedding was small, but friendly. In Nevada, mask rules were challenged and many refused to wear them at the wedding. One woman sat right in front of me, her unmasked face inches away. That's where the angst happened for me.
Even when Jeff got to work from home, we both got COVID that July. We quarantined for a month and were tested. Results came back after two weeks, which cast doubts over the medical processes. On the day I emerged from home to go shopping, I got a call from the health department confirming my test results. The caller was horrified when she realized I was talking to her from outside the store. I had quarantined a full month and hadn't any symptoms for two weeks. She didn't know how to handle the situation and referred me to her supervisor, who realized I used reasonable caution.
Meanwhile, going to the store was a nightmare. Aisles were in alternate directions. People were on edge when I even came near. Some people were angry and vocal at those who wore masks. And of course there was the Great Toilet Paper Raid.
A guy cutting pizzas fresh out of the oven at the take-out place wore his mask under his chin. I wanted to video him and report him to the health department, but then I felt like a 1984 Big Brother stooge. A group of elderly folks sitting outside at a coffee place were told by a police officer they were disobeying COVID distancing guidelines and must leave. Then people got masks expressing their individuality. A gay clerk at the store wore a gorgeous sequined mask that Jeff complimented him on. My mask had a Dia de Los Muertos motif and sparked smiles wherever I went. A group of knitters I hang out with met in the park instead of at the store, which had to close. We were able to support the store by buying online. Other stores managed to offer "essential products" to still do business. Only a few places actually went out of business. it was remarkable how resourceful people could be to survive the madness.
Vaccinations became a battle between freedom vs. wellness. Trump was sending mixed messages and MAGA tension was growing. Jeff's boss threatened that anybody who didn't get the vax would be fired. A friend of ours died of cancer because he refused the vaccine and his doctor refused to see him. It took over a year for things to settle back to some kind of normalcy. It seems like a bad dream now, but in America, the nightmare continues. It's just taking on a new kind of madness. We live in interesting times, Alvaro.