The darkness becomes overwhelming.

Part Three.

Here we are, at the hospital and I'm having another panic attack. I've already taken my full dose of Valium for the day and I can't calm down. Before they can send me to a psych unit they have to medically clear me. They medically cleared me and tried to get my anxiety under control. I received two doses of Ativan which seemed to take the edge off slightly, just enough that the numbness was subsiding and I could catch my breath. My heart rate wouldn't get under 130, but it seemed to be enough for the ER and I was transferred to the psych unit at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. Great. The hospital I used to work at. Now everybody is going to know that I've become insane, just what I needed.

There are no words to adequately describe the psych unit. All my belongings were taken away and I was strip searched. Yes, the bend and cough kind. It was humiliating. I couldn't wear my own clothes because they were viewed as inappropriate. I wore a gown. I now felt like I looked like how I felt. I was down to 106 lbs. I am 5 feet 4 inches tall and I was very underweight. Anxiety is an overpowering thing. Every second of every day was spent analyzing and over analyzing every aspect of my life. I had no appetite. I was not starving myself on purpose, I just couldn't eat.

While vacationing at the cabins I was getting undressed to get in the shower and my husband is just staring at me. He finally tells me that I look like I am anorexic. My heart sinks and the tears start to fall. I take a look at myself in the mirror. My collarbones are extremely defined and you can see my ribs. My cheek bones are very visible. My shoulder blades are poking out of my back and my hip bones are so boney that it actually hurt me to lay on my stomach. My stomach is concave with two very prominent hip bones. My ass? Non existent, and those things you call breast? More like ity bity mosquito bites. No fat. I hadn't realized I looked this bad. It didn't make me sad that I looked this way. I felt that it was a direct reflection of how I felt inside. I was sick and I looked sick. What was difficult, was that my husband noticed. How could he not? I felt there was nothing I could do about it and I didn't want to do anything about it.

The hospital staff asked me if I was anorexic. I told them I wasn't, it's just hard to eat when I have no appetite. They gave me some sleeping pills and I slept until 3pm the next day. I met with the hospital Psychiatrist. He discontinued my Adderall and suggested I start taking very high doses of anti-depressants and continue my Valium as needed. He wanted me to stay in the hospital for at least a week. I could feel my anxiety increasing. A WEEK?! I have two children who desperately need their mother. This place is like a prison. I'm being monitored like I'm on suicide watch, when I'm not suicidal. My days are planned out and I have no options, no free agency. I can't stay here for a whole week! I will really go insane! I need my children I need my husband. I asked if I could take the information the Psychiatrist recommended and use it when I meet with my new Psychiatrist as an outpatient. He didn't recommend it but I insisted. Since I went to the hospital on my own free will I could leave on my own free will. I was discharged the next day with a plan in mind.

While in the hospital I received another diagnosis to add to my list. Major Depressive Disorder. I couldn't really see it but maybe I was depressed. Anxiety and depression most times, go hand in hand. I wasn't suicidal, and I didn't feel depressed, but I had lost interest in everything I enjoyed. I found no joy in life anymore, no excitement. Everything was stressful. How can someone be happy when their whole life is filled with constant worry and stress? It's simple, you can't.

The first week out of the hospital was hard. It was my first time not taking Adderall in two years and I crashed. I had no energy, no motivation and the rushing thoughts I had in my head were so foggy and cloudy, I couldn't make sense of anything. I became depressed. I have never been depressed in my life and let me tell you, being depressed is one of the scariest feelings I've ever experienced. I felt like a dementor from Harry Potter had given me their kiss and sucked all the life and happiness out of me. It's a weird comparison, but it fits perfectly. This feeling inside me I couldn't shake. I wasn't happy, I didn't laugh, I didn't smile and every once in a while when my children would be their adorable selfs I would see their happiness on their faces and break down in tears. It was such a weird feeling to see happiness.

My anxiety started building again after about a week and I was back to having full blown panic attacks, now mixed with my depression. It is a heart breaking thing when my 5 year old daughter knows how to support me through a panic attack. She would come sit by my trembling shaking body, my face drenched with tears, and she would simply hug me "It's okay mama, just remember to breathe. Deep breaths mom. You can do this" while she strokes my arm. I hated myself. I hated that my innocent daughter had to witness me like this. It was not fair! She does not deserve a mom like this. My 1 1/2 year old son would come up to me and point at my tears, mumble some nonsense and hug me. Even my 1 1/2 year old could sense something was wrong. I don't deserve to be a mother. They deserved someone who could take them to the park. Hell, not even the park, just outside! We had a beautiful backyard and I couldn't even play in the backyard with them. My children have watched more TV the past few months then they have in their entire lifetimes. I continued to be paralyzed.

I went to my first Psychiatrist appointment. It went great. We decided to try another anti-depressant and Ativan. 1mg 3x a day. It wasn't enough. On an anxiety scale, 10 being a full blown panic attack, I was living every single day, all day long between an 8-9, with my anxiety tipping the scale at a full blown 10 at least once daily. This was not manageable. This was not doable. I thought I had lost my shit before, but now I had really lost it. My anxiety was so much worse. It completely consumed my life. My depression was overwhelming and I knew I couldn't be alone. My Psychiatrist would not change or up  my meds. At this point I felt I was drug seeking, and I was. I didn't want to get high, oh no. What I wanted was some relief. I NEEDED some relief. I could not keep going living my life with this high level of anxiety and no relief. I felt trapped. My anxiety would not subside. It was relentless. I was in the deepest part of hell I imagine there is. I hated my thoughts. I hated my feelings. My Psychologist had told me to tell myself that there is nothing to be scared of. Anxiety is trying to convince myself that there is something to be afraid of. I was constantly living in fear of something. When I tried to explore this further, I couldn't find anything that I would be so afraid of, nothing was coming to mind. I wasn't scared of anything specific. I was stressed and overwhelmed with everything. Going to the mailbox to get the mail was stressful. Getting dressed seemed impossible. Cooking dinner was out of the question. Everything and anything were stressors and I just couldn't escape.

This is when I started having suicidal thoughts. It's not that I wanted to die, but I felt there was no escape from my anxiety and depression. I just wanted to feel okay. I wanted my mind to just slow down. Damn it! How hard could that be?! How many more different medications am I going to have to try out before one of them works? If I could just have a few minutes a day that I could live without anxiety, I could manage! Just a few minutes was all I wanted. It was impossible. I refused to abuse my medication. I spoke to my Psychiatrist again telling her I needed help and this wasn't working. She refused to change anything and told me to continue with therapy. Therapy was teaching me techniques to decrease my anxiety levels, but the problem is, I had to have some moment where I felt I could start applying those techniques for them to be effective. I couldn't catch a break. My depression worsened. I told my therapist about my suicidal thoughts. I told him how they terrified me. My thoughts were real and I couldn't get them out of my head. I didn't want to die, but the anxiety was embedded in my bones and I couldn't get rid of those scary thoughts. My therapist told me it's okay to have these thoughts, as long as they are just thoughts. Our thoughts are like a river. We can stand by the river and watch the thoughts go by, even the most absurd thoughts were fine to flow through the river, as long as we didn't pick them up. Once we picked up a thought, we held onto that thought and we tend to focus more on it. More importantly, just because I was thinking these things, didn't mean I was going to act on them. He's right. I'm having these suicidal thoughts, but I don't want to die. It's just my weakness and I'm looking for an escape. I can get through this. I knew if I ever devised a plan for suicide I needed to tell somebody right away.

It was a Sunday. Kyle was home with us and my anxiety was sky rocketing. The kids wanted desperately out of house, as did Kyle. I felt bad that they had to be cooped up with such a lunatic all day. I told Kyle I'd be fine and they should go bowling. After they left, my thoughts started racing. Holy shit I'm alone. I can't be alone. I hate being alone. I don't trust myself. I'm impulsive. What if I do something I really don't want to do. Ughhh I really need to stop being so dramatic. I'll be fine. Seriously Anastasia, get a grip. They are just bowling and will be home in a few hours. Then the thoughts crept into my head. They won't be home for a few hours. I can't relax. I should cut myself. I'll just go to the bathroom and cut somewhere nobody will notice. Just to get me some physical pain. It will take away the emotional and psychological pain, if only momentarily. Yes, go cut yourself. Make it hurt. I stood in front of my bathroom for a good 20 minutes, having an internal fight with myself. Trying to reason with myself. It's hard to reason with myself out of cutting myself, when cutting myself seemed like the reasonable thing to do. I have had two very close family members who suffered from an eating disorder which also contributed to their very serious cutting. I remember the hurt I had in my heart for them. I couldn't do it. I talked myself out of it. I started bawling. Kyle came home with the kids and I was in the middle of another panic attack. I told him what had happened. I was so scared. I can't be left alone. I don't trust myself. I am really losing it. 

The depression worsened and the anxiety continued to climb. Oh how I wish I could somehow describe effectively what this felt like. I would write in my journal, 5 pages each entry, my feelings. There was such a chemical imbalance going on in my head and I felt utterly and completely helpless. I would cry all day. My eyes would be sore and puffy all day and I felt I just ran out of tears. I became numb. My brain would not shut off. I was constantly going, racing and sprinting through irrational fears and situations in my head. I considered shooting myself in the head. Not because I wanted to die, just to get my brain to stop. Sounds reasonable right? Wrong. I was so lost in my anxiety and depression I had lost the ability to think clearly.

I was laying in bed one night and I whispered "Kyle?", while tears are streaming silently down my face. I was shaking, hyperventilating and numb. "I took all the pills in my purse."

"Are you effing serious?!" He screams at me. I am silent. Tears running down my face. I don't say a word. He runs to my purse and shakes about 8 bottles of benzos, all of them full.

He comes back in the room and screams at me "Why would you ever tell me that?! Why would you ever do that?!" I tell him if he had taken 1 minute longer to come to bed, I would have already taken them all. That's the thing though. I've worked at a hospital long enough to know what is going to kill you and what is just going to seriously mess up your insides. I knew that the combination and amount of pills I had, was a lethal dose. I had the pills right at my fingertips. I just wanted my brain to stop. Please, dear God make it stop. I actually have sympathy for schizophrenic people. These poor people have voices telling them to kill themselves, and they can't escape. They are trapped in their own heads. I completely understand. I don't have voices telling me to do things, but I am a prisoner in my own mind. I couldn't escape my dark thoughts. No matter how hard I tried, I physically and mentally lacked the ability to pull myself out of this.

Kyle stayed home from work the next day. My thoughts did not subside. I was so anxious to hurt myself, to distract myself from my real pain with some physical pain. I so bad wanted to take all my pills and just become comatose. Not have to think about ANYTHING. My dark thoughts got worse. I started having a panic attack. I needed to go somewhere safe, otherwise I was going to kill myself. I told Kyle and he took me to the ER without hesitation. I was scaring him. I was scaring myself. For the second time in my life, weighing in at a whopping 100 lbs, I was admitted to the psych ward, this time I was on suicide watch.