Gray Confessions

I remember the first time I heard of someone who had just had a panic attack, and that the person had been taken by ambulance and taken to the hospital for investigation, he was not a friend or someone I knew very well but I still felt for him and his situation. I had very little mental health knowledge at the time, and I honestly didn't care too much about it, because I never imagined I could end up in such a situation.

However, last night, just before bed, I read a post by @derangedvisions, and although I didn't liked my feelings when I was reading, because I empathized very easily with his suffering, I continued to do so. I read everything to the end, and I can say that I fell asleep quite hard, because certain memories awoke in me, that seemed to be buried, and that I hoped they would be erased by now.

The altered mental states I went through, about three years ago, although probably not similar to those of @derangedvisions, were very painful for me, and came into my life like a summer breeze, which gradually turned into a storm.

I lived in Norway for almost a year, from 2016 to mid-2017, and although I really liked the country, I did not like what I worked there, and I did not like the conditions in which I got there. I had come after almost two years spent in almost continual stress, repeated moves in different cities of the country, but also abroad, and I hoped that I would find that place to call home...finally. For a short time it was like that, but everything took a radical turn within just a few weeks.

I worked a lot, never having a concrete schedule, I had a very disorganized boss, I had very little free time, and I had come to hate what I was doing in a very short time, seeing my life more miserable than ever. I was tired both physically and mentally and I felt somehow stuck but, I didn't know how mentally tired I was in reality, and how much all this stress would affect me. In 2017 I had my first panic attack, and I still don't feel comfortable talking about it.

It happened at the house of a client whose interior walls were being painted by me, working in the field of interior design, when I felt faint, having a heart attack, and dying, all at once. Unimaginable? Yes, even for me it was unimaginable, and that's why I decided at that moment, to leave everything of my hands, and simply go home. I reached the room, lay down on the bed and didn't know what was happening to me. I felt my heart beating hard and weird, I was dizzy, my head and chest ached, and I didn't know what to expect. I couldn't even eat. I took a shower and drank some water.

I had never had such symptoms before, but I imagined it would be a heart disease or something related to the brain. I had my blood pressure taken, there was nothing wrong with it, I looked in the mirror, I looked at myself as if it was the last time I did this, and I went to bed. The next day I woke up and went to eat. I was very tired, even though I had slept for about 10 hours, I felt dizzy and agitated at the same time and I wanted to get out of myself, to simply leave my body... somehow.

I called my parents and sister, because at that time I only had them in my life, and I told them what had happened. They told me that maybe it would be better to leave Norway and come home for a while to rest, after so many years of moving and changing jobs, and even go to the doctor. It would have been much easier for me to do this in Romania, without having to speak English to make myself understood. Although I didn't know exactly what it was, my sister said it could be depression. I refused to believe that ...

I wasn't the kind of person to suffer from a mental illness but, I don't think depression has a certain kind of people that it prefers. It settles where it is unconsciously invited, and does its job. I continued to do what I was doing there for another two months, and I returned home in the summer of 2017. I hoped that when I left Norway, those symptoms would leave me, but unfortunately, they appeared and disappeared, long time afterwards.

Slowly I started to get dizzy even more often, to feel even weaker, to lose weight, to become very anxious and agitated, to see life in gray much more than I had seen it before. I refused to go out with the days, I lived as if I was waiting to have a heart attack at any moment, and to die, and I could not imagine how I could get out of these states. I was looking for all kinds of diseases that I could suffer from, and then try to cure them, I ordered all kinds of supplements that I thought could help me, and I didn't understand what was happening at all. One day I had a strong panic attack again, and I arrived at the emergency room.

There I met, again, my family doctor, who had already sent me to many doctors, and who, after consulting me, told me to come to her office the next day. I was so panicked and anxious that for a while I refused to drive, and I went almost everywhere with my father. Even to the doctor. When I went inside, she asked me how I was feeling, and she actually told me what it was about, and that I should see a psychiatrist. The first reaction was... I'm not crazy... and I really wasn't but, something mentally was wrong.

I refused to go to a psychiatrist for a month, trying a lot of other doctors and refusing to believe that everything I was going through was psychic. However, at one point I realized that the quality of my life had changed a lot, that I no longer had a social life, and that I was doing things I never thought I could do. I was screaming at my parents for nothing, I was afraid I would die or I would suffer from a serious terminal illness, I was still tired most of the time, and I often felt dizzy. I was living in hell.

I remember that at that time, a 10-minute walk on the Danube seafront had become a real challenge for me, because I expected to faint at any second, to fall and reach the emergency room...again. Another experience that stuck in my mind was the one in which I got in the car one day, after almost a month, and I intended to go to the gas station to refuel. I sat in the driver's seat for almost 15 minutes and I didn't know whether to do it or not. I was afraid that I might faint or that I would have a heart attack on the road, and I was living in a terrible fear, which had practically no basis. However, I went to fuel, and saw that if I stopped paying attention to my mind, focusing on other things, those symptoms disappeared almost completely.

That's when I finally decided to go to a psychiatrist and see what it was all about, because I realized I couldn't go on like this forever. I met a very kind and understanding lady who made me understand what it was about, refusing to recommend me any kind of treatment, although in those moments I would have accepted anything, and teaching me how to defeat these demons. I visited her twice, but I struggled with those conditions for almost two years, since they started, until I managed to heal, during which time my social life was almost non-existent, I felt like a child learning to walk again, I forced myself to do a bunch of absolutely mundane things that anyone could do, which seemed like simple burdens to me, I didn't know where I was going but, I didn't have a place to go back.

I still remember that the very idea to create this blog came when I still had such problems, and that it seemed exhausting to concentrate on writing an article, and after publishing one I felt as if I were be working a full day. I didn't give up, and I even posted four times a day at that time, for a while. Probably if I had discovered this platform earlier it would have been much easier for me. I am sure that overcoming those mental states and overcoming the barriers that I had created myself had several active factors, but being active daily on this blog helped me to continue and recover.

I still don't feel comfortable talking about these experiences, and it was really hard for me to dig up some of them, but I did it because I realized that running away from the dark mirror of the mind doesn't help at all. I give credit to the inspiration to write this post and to share these confessions with you, to @derangedvisions whom I wish to defeat his demons for good, to finally give up pills, and to enjoy life to its fullest. To those who have not lived such experiences I wish them to never live them, and to take care of their mental health.

Thanks for attention,
Adrian