Escaping The Tornado

It all started 2 years ago. I was out for dinner with my family when I first felt it. At first I thought it was just an acid reflux from eating too much spice. But then, it started growing by the minute and suddenly everything went numb. My head started spinning like the wheels of a high-speed sports bike and my legs started shaking like they had no life left in them. There was a very prominent choking feeling in my neck as if some monster was pulling onto my esophagus hard enough to make me choke but not enough to take my life. I could feel my heart beating as if it was on the highest fast forward setting.

I was rushed to the hospital by my very clueless and scared family members and upon reaching there, I was taken into the general ward immediately and given an injection after which I was absolutely fine and back to sanity within minutes. Turns out, it was an allergic reaction to something that I had eaten. Everyone was relieved, and we went home as if nothing had even happened.

Everything was completely fine until the next night, when I felt it again. This time it was a jolt of pain passing through my chest like a lightning bolt and that same monster choking on my esophagus again. As soon as I felt it, my brain started tingling and hands started shaking. I felt as if it was either the end of the world or end of me. I was rushed to the hospital once again and as I was sitting there in the waiting room, I suddenly started feeling better, this time even without the injection and I was back to sanity once again within minutes.

This was confusing on so many levels.
1. How did my allergy return the second day without me eating anything particular again?
2. Why did I feel better suddenly after reaching the hospital after struggling for breath all the way there?
3. And, what the hell was happening to me?

I had a constant pain in my chest since that first time, and it was very unsettling. Hence, after a few days, my mom, who is a doctor herself, took me to another specialist doctor to check if any wire in my system had gone loose which was causing my body such bizarre trouble again and again. He investigated me and based on my answers to his questions prescribed me a bunch of medicines. But it didn't stop there, the medicines didn't have any effect on my constant chest pain and so the doctor concluded that there was something wrong in my stomach and in order to find out, I needed to get an endoscopy done, which means that I had to get some random tube put in my mouth, through my food canal, into my stomach to find out the problem. Yes, it is as scary as it sounds.

After that incidence, they concluded that my stomach was completely fine and when they couldn't come to any conclusion for my pain, they prescribed me another medicine. But it didn't stop there, I was recommended another doctor, who is not really called a 'doctor' in India; the psychologist. I didn't really understand why, but I went with the advice and visited the psychologist.

All of this was during the span of 2 months and during this time, I still had no clue what was happening to me and I was just blindly popping pills daily. After a few sessions with the psychologist, I was told that I had developed an anxiety disorder and all this crazy stuff that was happening to me are what we call 'panic attacks.' I was shocked. What? Me? And Anxiety? The girl who is the most spontaneous and carefree one in the family has started worrying about random things to such level that she had to take medication to calm herself down?

It took me another 3 months to just digest the fact that the wires in my body had infact come loose only they had come loose in my brain. They were not just loose, but seriously messed up. During this, I started loosing attendance in college, I used to get panic attacks every single day and as a result, I had locked myself out completely from the world.
That's when I realized something, something very important.
Things like anxiety, depression aren't just words. They're real. Anxiety doesn't mean that feeling you get in your stomach before an exam or before your result, and depression isn't that feeling of sadness that you feel when you fight with your best friend.

Anxiety makes you believe that you are the worst human being ever to be born on this Earth and that it's soon going to be the end of you no matter what you do. It takes each and every thought of yours and turns it into a boomerang, bringing it back, again and again and again, with no control over it whatsoever. It's like someone else is directing your life's movie and changing the script whenever they want without your consent and all you can do is try to keep up with the ever changing roller coaster.

Since that day till today,  I changed a number of 'doctors', took therapy sessions, popped I don't know how many pills, and amidst all that, flunked my first year in my college and acquired heaps of backlogs and a red mark on the report card and in life.

But, inspite all this, I can surely say one thing, that even after all those panic attacks where in I struggled to just breathe, let alone keep my mind sane, and losing attendance, marks and losing a lot of people from my life, i still survived.
I survived from the wretches of my own mind and healed. All of this wouldn't have been possible without the people that were always there with me through these dark times who were always encouraging me to not give up and assuring me that it will get better and that I am better than what my anxiety tried to show me.
A big thank you to my family and friends. I wouldn't have been what I am today if it weren't for you all. It took me a year to realize my worth but now I am the only one directing my movie with all the backlogs cleared and lessons learnt in college and in life.

So, people, if someone tells you that they are suffering from any mental illness, just try and listen to them and understand their situation instead of making fun of them. Making fun is easy, understanding and helping someone is not. But making fun of someone might be fun for the moment, but can go wrong in many ways. Helping someone may not always be easy, but it will never go wrong, and you never know, you may even save someone's life.

-Brown and Indian