Angst

Today, all day, I was tremendously anxious. I still am. I don't know why - I've got no more to worry about today than I had yesterday. It's not particularly uncommon for me to feel that way but not to the degree I felt it today. Most of the time I'm aware of a low-level anxiety which has pretty much just become the background noise in my brain but it can get worse. When it's bad it can be difficult to manage as it often results in physical symptoms, leaving me feeling pretty awful.

After months of relatively little in the way of major anxiety, today I had a taste of the sort of nervous nausea I used to experience regularly. It wasn't serious, just an upset stomach and a kind of heightened nervous perception of things but I don't really understand what precipitated it. It did, however, remind me of a particularly difficult time in my life when I was so anxious that I felt physically sick almost every day.

It was during my last semester of university and I just wanted the year to be over so I could graduate and move on with my life. The degree I was doing wasn't a difficult one but as I entered each new semester I began to feel more anxious and less confident about my ability to complete the coursework. I wouldn't let myself quit because, at that point in my life, I felt I needed to get a university degree; I didn't think I'd be able to respect myself if I didn't finish the course. Incidentally, getting through it and graduating didn't really make me feel any better about myself, but that's a story for another time.

I'd done reasonably well in my first year; not exceptional, but I hadn't been very happy and that got in the way of me doing as well as I possibly could have. The beginning of my second year was tough. It was probably the lowest point in my life up to that time. I became increasingly depressed and I was struggling to find meaning in my life. I also was seriously doubting my abilities academically; I began to see myself as an idiot incapable of grasping even the simplest concepts, unable to complete basic tasks. I worried constantly about failing and, poisoned by my negativity, became extremely unproductive. I still attended all my classes, completed all my work and also worked a part-time job but often I felt like I was about to fall apart. I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning. Everything was a struggle. Despite that, I don't think I ever let on to people how I really felt; I don't think any of my classmates or colleagues knew how low I was. I am pretty good at holding myself together when I need to and managed to go about my life like everything was fine.

It was at this time I started seeing a psychologist and I began taking anti-depressants. I was also prescribed an anti-anxiety drug but I don't think I took it more than a couple of times. None of these things really made me feel any better: I'd leave my sessions with the psychologist feeling awful and the anti-depressants didn't seem to lift my mood at all. I made it through the semester and, although I received the worst grades I'd ever got throughout my entire schooling life, I still passed all my subjects reasonably comfortably. That didn't make me feel any better - I still felt like a failure.

By the time I was in my final semester my anxiety had become even worse. I couldn't concentrate and I spent just about every waking hour making myself sick with worry. Even though I had made it that far and not failed a class I still doubted my ability to make it over the finish line. In fact, inversely proportional to my level of depression and anxiety, my grades had been improving every semester since the beginning of my second year. Even though I was now doing quite well, I still didn't believe in myself. Before exams I talked myself into believing that I would fail, irrespective of how much I had studied. The way my brain was working defied logic. I could believe I would fail an exam, worry about failing until I was physically sick, yet take the exam and score ninety percent and still not flinch from my position that I was incompetent. That I was actually doing well didn't matter at all; I put all my success down to good luck and told myself it wasn't a reflection of my abilities.

I don't know how much longer I could have continued on that way. I think, eventually, I would have reached a point where I did myself some damage, physical or emotional. I didn't ever get to find out because I managed to hold myself together long enough to graduate. I had stopped taking the anti-depressants a short time before then since I was experiencing no real benefit from them - not even any sort of placebo effect - but maybe it wasn't my brain chemistry that was the problem. Maybe it was just a pattern of negative thinking. Or maybe it was my brain chemistry and I just wasn't taking a high enough dose. Instead of trying to get to the root of the problem I swept it to one side.

For a short time I was just glad to have completed my studies and didn't experience much in the way of anxiety. I started working full-time and that became my life. Once the novelty of having graduated university wore off (it really doesn't mean much) I started trying to eliminate feeling anxious by avoiding situations likely to result in me feeling that way. That meant keeping more and more to myself. And so, a few years on, I find myself in my current situation, with no real responsibility and with little to worry about. From here I could, at least in theory, choose to do anything at all with my life. Despite that, feel like I have no options. I am still depressed - probably as much or more than I was a few years ago - and I'm becoming increasingly unjustifiably anxious. I suppose I was never going to be successful at running away from myself.