#sparkofmadness

I was sixteen when I had my first panic attack.

It was at a sleepover at my best friends' house. It was late and everyone was asleep. I was lying in the same guest bed I'd slept in countless times before. I was shivering uncontrollably. My hands and feet were freezing and wouldn't warm up. I was shaking so hard I was sure Molly, sleeping next to me, would wake up. I curled up, tucking my feet underneath me and shoving my hands under my arms, hoping to warm up.

But a wave of nausea sent me lurching to the bathroom down the hall. I was certain I'd be sick. I collapsed in front of the toilet, braced for unpleasantness. But nothing happened. I just sat there, shaking and weak and nauseated and terrified.

I was about to die. Something deep inside was irretrievably broken, a malfunction that couldn't be fixed. I was certain of it. I knew for sure that my body had betrayed me, that some small mechanism in brain or heart had started clicking just out of sync with everything else and that these were my last moments. Dread washed through me, a slow molten lead that carried sparks of helpless adrenaline. My heart pounded, my head swam, and I couldn't. stop. shaking.

It didn't even occur to me to wake anyone up, to call an ambulance, to ask my friends' parents what was happening. Whatever was happening, nothing would stop it. Nothing could protect me. No action I could take, no help from grown ups. Whatever this was, it was happening and it was permanent. Something was irreversibly fractured in the world, in me.

I don't know how long I sat there, huddled on the cold tile, waiting to die.

Eventually the chemicals in my brain started to level out, enough for me to regain some sense of agency. I crept into Becky's bedroom and grabbed a copy of the most comforting book I could think of - Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone - and went back into the hall to get a blanket from the closet. I was certain I was not going to get back to sleep any time soon, so I retreated back to the bathroom. I crawled into the bathtub, cocooned myself in the blanket, and read until the sun came up. The shivering subsided, slowly.

The next day, I tried to explain what had happened, and Molly looked at me, all of thirteen years old, and told me I'd had a panic attack.

I was lucky. For so many reasons. I had a name for what had just happened. I had a diagnosis. I had a starting point for understanding what was happening.

And I have friends who understand mental illness, who suffer from anxiety and compulsive disorders, who have lived with and survived depression and bipolar disorder. I've been surrounded by people who don't stigmatize mental illness. I've felt free to seek out counseling and treatment, because I know my anxiety is not shameful or weird.

My friends gave me a space to talk, and learn, and understand.

My anxiety still interrupts my life. I have heart palpitations and stress headaches that trigger hypochondria anxiety attacks. I have panic attacks (fewer now that I live in sunny Colorado, away from the months of gloom that dominate the Midwest) that cut social outings short. I recently went caving with friends. I love the outdoors, and am fascinated by all kinds of nature. I'm not claustrophobic, but halfway through the cave system, I had to stop. I was overwhelmed with anxiety, and no amount of rational thinking let me shake it off.

I tend to be rational and objective. My anxiety disorder has made me confront the disconnect between logic and emotion, because although I know my fears are unfounded and unlikely, I still find myself unable to power through them. It felt like a failure for a long time.

But I'm surrounded by people who love me. I run in a part of society that doesn't look down on therapy or medication, that sees those things as proactive and admirable, instead of admissions of failure. I learned to hold the cognitive dissonance, to accept that all my rationality is still held in a body controlled by chemicals that sometimes get out of balance. It's okay that my logic sometimes loses against my brain juices.

But not everyone is lucky like me.

In the wake of Robin Williams' death after a long battle with depression, people are talking about mental illness.

He said once that you're only given one little spark of madness, and that you have to use it, and if you let it go out, you've got nothing. He was talking about the part of each of us that sees the world unlike anyone else, that can create things that are new and wonderful.

Becky came up with the idea to use the celebration of uniqueness and creativity to help people talk about mental illness, with the hashtag #sparkofmadness.

Depression is deadliest when it's suffered alone. You feel alienated, and you feel like you're alienating others. It strips you of hope, of objectivity, of the ability to feel the love your friends are giving you. It lies to you.

I had a bout of severe depression at the end of my junior year of college. It was triggered by, stereotypically enough, being dumped, right before my birthday.

I have always been pretty happy, pretty optimistic. I never questioned or really even considered my own self-worth. I knew I was a good person, knew I was loved, knew I was worthwhile.

But for about five months, I stopped believing it. I started thinking of myself as someone it was easy to walk away from. I started thinking that all the love and support my friends showed me was unearned and shameful. It felt like I was lying to them, that they thought I was this admirable thing when I had nothing to offer. I didn't see myself as worthy of love or time or effort, from myself or from anyone else.

I took incompletes in half my courses that semester, which my professors were kind enough to grant. I had spent the previous two decades of my life defining myself as a good student, as someone eager to learn, and even that persona was taken away. Or, I let it slip away.

I found myself crying, and hating myself for crying because it was weak and self-serving, and I didn't really deserve the self-indulgence of tears.

The color went out of things. I fell into a soul-sapping boredom and ennui. No highs, no lows, just a constant bleakness. I took hotter and hotter showers, wishing the heater would be calibrated higher, trying to burn some sensation into my skin. I took up idly harmful hobbies, like drinking slightly too much, or smoking the occasional cigarette. I was still enough of a hypochondriac to prevent me from ever doing anything really damaging, fortunately. But I felt a deep satisfaction in the disregard for my health, a quiet, savage pleasure in self-negation. It was like, well, no one else is willing to admit that I'm not worth much, so I will. I would drag my nails across my arms, leaving stinging welts that would nonetheless fade. I didn't want notice or pity, because I didn't deserve it.

What saved me was my best friends, the ones who helped me navigate the rough waters of anxiety way back when.

I wrote a blog post (back when Xanga was a thing) about how I was feeling. I don't think I was looking for pity or reassurance. The last little treacherous part of me that craved the concern of my friends (the last little part that was still sane and didn't believe depression's lies) felt weak and selfish and greedy. What I wanted was confirmation, was agreement with my viewpoint. I wanted them to realize, Oh yeah, that's right, what have we been thinking, of course you're not worth our time! How silly of us! I wanted to get rid of those links of affection, because the affection hurt me.

But they didn't.

They didn't douse me in trite "It'll be okay"s and "Cheer up"s! They listened to me, and didn't minimize my feelings by telling me I'd feel better soon. They just expressed love, refused to let me hold onto the lies I'd been telling myself. They shared their own battles with depression and anxiety. They chipped away at the unfeeling armor I'd been building up. It sucked.

Cracks started opening up in the armor. Everything hurt. Being selfish hurt. Allowing people to care about me hurt. But it let me entertain the possibility that maybe it wasn't that everyone was deluded about me, but that maybe I was deluded about myself. I set up an appointment to talk with a therapist at the local hospital. My college has an arrangement with the hospital; counseling and therapy are provided for any student who wants it, for free.

I only went for a couple months. We didn't work through any great revelations. I already knew what I needed to be doing, had thought through all the logical side of things. But what helped, what I needed, was someone who didn't know me who cared. My therapist called me kiddo, was generous with concern and affection. I know it's part of the job. But it was good, needed, to be cared about by someone who had never known me happy and whole. For someone who only knew me as broken and raw to still find me worth time and effort, in any capacity, helped me start to see myself that way.

Being depressed wasn't itself something to be ashamed of. It happened to me. It wasn't because I wasn't vigilant enough. It just happened. It's something that happens to a lot of us. For me, it was a brief period, a depressive episode. For others, it's a lifelong struggle, a constant battle to care and be cared for.

Mental illness, like most poisonous things, is a danger when it's hidden and not talked about. When its victims suffer in silence. When it divides us and whispers or screams lies at us.

We fight stigmas against mental illness by having conversations. We move forward by sharing. We win when we speak up and reach out.

You know someone who suffers from mental illness, whether it's anxiety or depression or any other disorder. We all experience hardship and grief. We all need support.

Share your stories. We can lift the stigma against mental illness and therapy. The time to talk about depression is not when it claims a life. It's now, so we can know we're not alone.

Here are more personal stories of fighting mental illness:
#sparkofmadness
Becky's story of fighting compulsion and anxiety
Mickey's story of fighting depression
Allie's story of fighting depression

Learn more about depression:
From the Mayo Clinic
From the National Alliance on Mental Illness