My first night terror took the form of a waking dream wherein the crocodile from Peter Pan was swimming up my bed, its mouth open, its vacantly happy eyes bobbing back and forth. I was four years old. I screamed so loudly that when my mother rushed in to find me apparently wide awake, still convinced that there was a cartoon crocodile on my bed, she actually checked to see what it was that I had seen that had scared me so. Of course, there was nothing there.
Just like there was nothing there the first time I went cold turkey off of Paxil, which they would later take off the market in America because of a supposed link to heightened risk of suicide in teenage patients. I was ten years old and I suffered a panic attack so acute that I overpowered my 6’4”, over two hundred pound father as he was trying to drag me out of my hiding place. There was nothing there. I knew there was nothing there. But if I didn’t hide—if I didn’t hide—
I have attempted suicide three times in my life. I have not attempted suicide since the age of 11.
My hiatal hernia, or the congenital muscular weakness that caused it, went undiagnosed for eight years, even though I would stop being able to eat solid food for months at a time if I was under unusual stress or in a new situation.
Even when I was in counselling, no one thought that a girl my age with a history of anxiety disorders and depression could possibly have a physical reason for this kind of behaviour. I was told I had an eating disorder, even though I desperately wanted to be able to eat.
Not until I was 24 and sitting in front of a doctor who also had a stomach condition was the possibility even floated, and I still had to stage a sit-in at the GPs in order to get the endoscopy which would confirm his suspected diagnosis. By that point I had been unable to eat solid food for nearly three months.
People who knew me at that time still make fun of me for carrying food on me at all times so that I could eat small amounts throughout the day. They still don’t understand that it was not a choice, not a fad diet, not just me being ‘how you are’. Translation: being crazy.
I am thirty years old. I am living in one of the most expensive cities in the world as a legal immigrant. I have two degrees and am part of an internationally recognized scholarship organization. I teach at universities. I teach in homes. I work with kids, many of whom are SEN students. I volunteer in my community. I read good books and am in the process of writing a bad one. I’ve been married, happily, for nearly five years. I am an artist and a comic. My first feature film is in the final stages of post-production.
I will always be like this.
I spent a morning a few days ago curled up on the rug in my bathroom, unable to do anything but sob for half an hour. Then I got up, got dressed and went to work. I never miss work. Well, not because of how I am, anyway.
I take no drugs, prescription or otherwise. I eat a lot of fruit and not much meat. I seldom drink, and because I don’t do it often, I don’t do it well. I exercise, and when I don’t exercise I try to do something physical for 15 minutes. I talk it out, a lot, even when no one is there to hear me do it. I’m learning to sing.
I am registered with my local talk therapist. I will go to them first when things get hard. If that is not enough, I will go to my GP and go back on medication. I have not been on medication for nearly four years. You have to have a plan.
When speaking to a friend about my experience, she was surprised--
“You’re the sanest person I know,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, “because I’m probably the only person you know who’s had lessons on how to be sane. Everyone else just makes it up as they go along.”
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