Fear, Anxiety, and Yarn

So as I mentioned in the previous post, I'm in the process of going off my anti-anxiety medication.

I tell everyone I'm super excited to be finally getting off it.  I also tell everyone I can feel a difference.  These are both true: I feel lighter and I am very happy to be getting off it, especially as I read the prolonged effects of this medication.  Two years was more than enough on it.

But there's more.

I'm kind of...scared.

Yeah.  I'm scared to go off this medication. 

The reason I went on it was for panic attacks.  I started having them my second year of community college, a few months after I stopped harming myself.  (That's a blog for another time, my loves.)  I guess my body and mind couldn't cope with the fact that I didn't have a physical release for stress anymore, so they decided to give me one.

Fear is a very good thing.  It can be, anyway.  After all, that's how early cavemen knew to run from certain predators and situations.  That's how humans were able to evolve so much - fight or flight.  But for some of us, our bodies give us too much adrenaline.  There's too much fight or flight.

That's what happened to me.  I would be at school, waiting in the student area between classes, and the urge to cry would fall on me for no reason.  Anything could set it off.  That was okay.  I could handle crying.  But it evolved.  It became the walls caving in and me feeling like I couldn't breathe because there was no room.  I would begin to hyperventilate.  I either had to leave the area and go outside and hope it went away, or call my mom and ask her to come pick me up.

Once I went on the meds, it got better, at least for a while.  I met the man of my dreams, I graduated with honors with my Creative Writing degree.  I got a part time job at a retail place.  And then, just when things seemed right -

Wham.

They were back, worse than ever.  I don't know if it was the lack of sleep over the summer, the stress of my job at the time, the Batman theater shooting (Trev and I were at a different theater for the midnight release, but I had a friend at the cinaplex in the theater next door) or what.  But I just couldn't function.

Well.  Hello extra drugs.  And hello not being able to feel anything: no sex drive, no bright happiness, no colorful joy.  It wasn't that it was bad, it was just that the colors were kind of running together.  I honestly have a really hard time remembering most of those few months, to be totally honest.

Fast forward to the present.

Things are amazing right now.  I wouldn't say perfect, because nothing is perfect.  If my relationships were all perfect and I was perfect and life was perfect, I would be very, very concerned.

Things are good, though.  Perhaps better than they've been in the past two or three years even.  Which is why my doctor and I decided I would be able to get off my meds.  Because I want to feel again.  I want to taste life again.

And that brings me back to the original topic.  Fear.

What if I've forgotten who I was while I was on these meds?  What if I'm not me anymore?

Worse yet, what if the panic and fear and walls caving in all return? 

I know I have an amazing support system.  I have a strong faith.  And I believe in myself now, too, something I didn't have before.

And so, I knit.  I knit it all - the fear, the doubt, the anxiety, the concerns - row by row into Katie's Doctor Who scarf.  Straight garter stitch, over tweleve feet long.  I can feel the tension leave as I work on it, feel the doubts go away.

So far, the results of both the med reduction and the scarf have been great.  I'm feeling like me again, with a few exception days like today where I just want to sleep and feel like I'm walking in a fog.  But those are few and far now.  And the scarf is looking amazing.  I have about two feet done at this point.

(There will be pictures soon.  Promise, guys and gals.)

There you have it.  Where I am.  Thank you for reading. :)

~Meaghan