In around April this year, I started to get anxiety back again - my Dad was redeploying to Afghanistan, and this rotation had me really stressed; my fear of losing him clouded alot of my judgement, and I would find myself anxious or in tears when nothing in particular had set me off. My worries have lessened somewhat, but I desperately want him to come home, where I can talk to him whenever I want to, and know that he is safe.
When this anxiety started playing up again, I decided it was not going to beat me again, and I started walking everyday. I loved it so much, and was racking up enormous kilometres, and feeling wonderful. After walking over 100km in 10 days, I fractured my tibia and couldn't even weight bear - I lay around feeling sorry for myself in enormous pain. About 2 weeks into it, I demanded better pain killers from my Dr, and was put on panadeine forte, something I'd had easily before, but not in many years. Within 15 minutes of taking my tablets, I was writhing around on my bed, in intense agony, shaking and vomiting, I could hardly breathe. Mum put me into her car to take me to hospital, D stayed at home with the kids and friends that we had over for the 2nd state of origin. Within a minute of being in the car, I had worsened, Mum called the ambulance and turned around to wait in our driveway for them, by the time she stopped the car, I was unconscious. Mum yelled for D, who pulled me out of the car and lay me on the driveway where he continued to make sure I was breathing etc. Once the ambulance arrived, an IV was inserted on my driveway, it contained morphine and ondansetron to stop the pain and spewing; then we went off to hospital, where we discovered I was now highly allergic to codeine, a relatively common throwback of having your gall bladder removed. After a few hours we were sent home, and I went straight to bed.
To most people, this would just be seen as a case of pretty bad luck; to me, it increased my anxiety 10 fold, yet again my body was failing and I wondered if this would be the case for the rest of my life. After my horrible pregnancies, and subsequent illness with M, sickness causes me a lot of stress - memories floor me of not being able to get better immediately, and an immense feeling of being trapped. Obviously with a pregnancy, the only ways to get better are to deliver or terminate, I was trapped in a sick body for 9 months; and with my illness after M, I was doing all the injections, taking all the meds, and yet my physical recovery was very slow. Every illness I get, especially with nausea, send me into a bit of a funk; a lot of a funk really. Now I stress about getting sick, and suffering, which only increases my body's chances of getting sick so it's a bit of a nasty cycle. I have struggled for years with lack of energy, fatigue and being unmotivated - you can't understand how exhausting it is to suffer mental illness if you don't have it, it literally drains your entire being.
Physically, the pain of my fractured tibia decreased, but the mental pains are still remaining. I feel very unmotivated, and have no energy - I could sleep all day; and have struggled in the last week to even maintain functionality. I have a lot of fears - fear of failing my children, fear of never getting better, fear of not enjoying my life, fear of dying and a fear of loss. Many people wouldn't understand that sometimes when I look at my positives, my beautiful kids, I see fear. I see the fear of them struggling with mental health issues, or judging me later on and finding me wanting, of not being good enough for them, and of fucking them up in some way. I see the fear of losing them and it floors me. I fear that people judge me as a Mother for having had depression, that I somehow wasn't good enough, or didn't love my kids enough; when sometimes my love for them feels suffocating it's so intense; they are my entire life.
I never wanted mental illness, and everyday that it affects me, I wish it was different; I struggle some days to remind myself that I'm not at fault. That it's not another failure. I pray and hope that one day I will be completely free of anxiety and fear; so that I can feel that I am being the best I can be again. I pray that I will stop judging myself so harshly, and stop replaying others judgement in my head. I want mental freedom - I want to enjoy the time I have here on Earth and not worry about things i cannot change. Only I can do that for myself, but sometimes knowing someone understands me goes a long way.
I saw a beautiful meme on the computer on day it said....
I Don't want you to fix my life,
I want you to hold my Hand, whilst I do it.
a lot of the time, sufferers of this illness just need to know they are supported, that someone will hold their hand, without judgement, whilst they fix themselves.
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