I started these faces around the same time my anxiety began, in early October.
I think this is the longest I’ve gone without posting.
Just sitting down to collect my thoughts and write them here is raising my heart rate. My mind is both full and blank. The different parts of my head take turns fucking with me: my brain, my temples, my sinuses, my blocked nose and ear (mostly the right). I’m lucky if I get an accumulated five hours of sleep a night. I can’t sleep in a bed, just couches, no matter where I am: started in London, then my parents’ and now at home. My home. It feels like a stranger to me and I need to love it again. I’m finding it a challenge to fill my lungs with the oxygen required to breathe normally. And sometimes I forget to breathe at all and have to remind myself.
I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and I’m doing everything I can to fix myself.
Below is a Facebook status update I posted November 4. It’s how things began, in a nutshell. I was so desperate for answers and help when I wrote this:
I’m trying so hard to be positive. It doesn’t come naturally to me and I get so sick of it.
This can’t be forever.
Another status update:
The drawings I started in October:
The one who smiled. Because it was October 5.
Back when I was in London. I’m better now and I think (hope) I’m going to be OK.