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Anne Lamott said, "There are two types of prayer. One is 'help, help, help.' the other is 'thank you, thank you, thank you.'" And somewhere around the age of 17, my brain decided I would be the kind of person who was 99% "help, help, help." Only in my mind, it reads, "HELP! HELP! HELP!"
I have some kind of anxiety disorder. I hate that I do, but I do. I've spent the last 19 years trying to control it.
Here's what I have tried so far: I started smoking cigarettes at 17. I spent a year or so cultivating a really impressive pot-smoking habit, and when I couldn't get my hands on that, I drank. I went from a 4.0 to a 2.0 in six months, and my fear escalated to panic. I began regularly having panic attacks, resulting in hospitalization, for the entire summer of my 17th year. Eventually, the panic wore me down, and I became deeply, darkly depressed. (When you begin to identify with the Smiths in a non-sardonic or ironic way, you need to seek professional help.) Being depressed didn't make me hip, creative, or interesting. It made me paralyzed. I had nothing to say. I stopped writing, I stopped singing, I stopped dreaming. I clung to everyone around me, stuck behind some glass wall, always separate, always singled out for disaster.
I think that's when I started to feel like death was like a game of dodge ball. The longer I survived, the more balls were thrown at me. I still feel like that. I don't know why. It's not something I'm very good at controlling.
Not for lack of trying. I kept at the combination of pot, cigarettes, and heavy drinking, and added to it promiscuity, a rigorous eating disorder, and complete abandonment of who I actually was in favor of some form of security. No writing, no intellectual banter, (and I really love me some intellectual banter), no outdoor activity, no athletic activity, nothing. I think I figured if I stayed out of my own life, it wouldn't be taken from me.
Don't get me wrong- I knew what I was doing was terrible. I felt bad all the time. I just preferred it to feeling like I had before.
Then, I got married and pregnant- not in that order. At 21, I had a child. While I was pregnant, the worrying intensified- possibly because I simultaneously stopped doing everything- drugs, drinking, smoking, eating disorder... I worried that I had AIDS, and that something terrible would happen to my child. I worried that the flea bomb my employer had done would damage my baby's brain. I worried that I would give birth to a dead baby because I had an abortion when I was 19. I worried and worried. I worried like I was getting something done.
And then, my son was born- impossibly beautiful, perfect.
It got much worse after that. I had to stop watching t.v., except for movies and Lois and Clark. I started to look for God, to help me make sense of what I was afraid of- to provide me some feeling of security, even in death or disaster. My husband was not really interested in being a husband, which made it worse still. The eating disorder came back first. I had baby weight to lose, but I just kept right on losing.
Then, after I asked my husband for a divorce, I started smoking again. The only things that kept me from heavy drinking was that my son rose early, and I couldn't afford the booze. But when I could, or when my son was at his father's, I was as drunk as soon as I could be.
I spent the next six years, from 24- 29, living just like that. Alternating between one panic and another, one form of "medicine" and another- anorexia, bulimia, and smoking, oh my! Heavy drinking, shopping, and binging, oh my! By the time I was 29, I was exhausted from it. I didn't know where to begin getting healthy. I felt like all the habits were connected- I couldn't stop smoking unless I stopped drinking, because I'd certainly smoke if I drank, right? I couldn't stop smoking until I got over the eating disorder, because I'd gain weight if I quit smoking, right? And shopping and binging had become the same thing, really- a jolt of excess to comfort me. A massive dopamine surge to keep the dark little creatures at bay.
