what this isn't and what this is.

You wake up one day and you're not fine anymore.

You're the person that while taking a walk on what could only be described as a perfect autumn day, the sudden thought that you're in inevitable danger and the next person you come across could harm you snakes its way around your throat like an invisible noose that keeps getting tighter. You can't move. You can't think. You can't breathe.

The normal, everyday things cause paralysis of your mind and your body and the things that used to be done without much thought become impossible.  You're the person in the grocery store reduced to tears because you can't find where they moved the sour cream. Because things have changed and your brain can't decipher the what from the how from the why.

I woke up one day and I wasn't fine.

***

Depression

Anxiety

Obsessive

Manic

My eyes flit quickly across the words, still blurred from sleep but I've read the synopsis of each disorder so often I don't even need to enter the entire website into Google. Being woken out of a dead sleep by what Web M.D. is telling me is yet another anxiety attack will turn anyone into a self-diagnosing machine. Or maybe that's just me?

It'll pass... I tell myself over and over again. And it does.

Until one day, it doesn't.

***

"Have you heard of manic depression or bipolar disorder?" he asks.

The words fly out of my mouth at lightening speed: "I'm not crazy!" I say with such enthusiasm it lifts me off the paper covered table I'm sitting on. It crinkles in the most unpleasant sounding way and I hate the way it feels against my palms. I'm not crazy I say again, but in a more age appropriate tone. A declaration because the first time wasn't convincing enough.

"I didn't say you were crazy, but wouldn't you agree that there's something wrong with allowing yourself to walk around like this all the time?"

I'll remember the moment right before I felt my heart break completely and the shaky breath I held in for longer than I wanted to because the thing I said next was going to change everything. It was going to change things forever, even though forever is absolutely relative in situations like these.

I just...I think...I need help dealing with the worse than bad days, you know? I need hope that the rest of my life won't be defined by this feeling and I need to be able to believe that I can get better.

His eyes seemed to soften as he placed a piece of paper on the instrument table directly to my left. "I"ll give you a minute and when I get back, we'll go over this."

There's not much that I know for sure in this world but the one thing I did know in that moment was that this was one test that I didn't want to score high on.

***

I thought that an official diagnosis would help me feel better. And it has, a little bit. It has in the sense that the fear of going to sleep and never waking up doesn't keep me up at night anymore. It's the multitude of other obsessive thoughts running through my brain that stir me from slumber and keep my eyes wide open.

I thought an official diagnosis would give weight and credibility to the reason behind my somewhat erratic tendencies. As if one person's confirmation of everything I've known and tried to keep hidden from the world would somehow give me a pass card.

You know that one time when I disappeared for a week and completely ignored you for no real reason whatsoever? That wasn't exactly my fault...

I didn't think that this was going to be something that I find myself wanting to talk about. But even more so I didn't think that wanting to talk about it would prove to be so difficult. It's painful in the way that once the words are formed and released - that moment right before unleashing them into this world - I know that there's no way of taking it back. There's no excuse of sorry I'm having a bad day because...because my bad days now have a precedence. My bad days are generally now days where nothing actually bad happens at all yet here I am, still left with this feeling.

It's the most vulnerable I've ever felt in my life.

***

I'm reminded of this every single morning when I take the pill that's supposed to be helping me. Not fix me, mind you, but at least make it bearable to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other. I'm reminded of it again later on when I take a different pill because that fear of something potentially bad happening has me frozen to the point of where I can't move even though my body says something different. I think about it when I attempt and fail to describe these feelings to others: the guilt and shame of being weak, the selfishness of wanting someone to just listen and the hopelessness of it all when they can't quite understand why and try to relate it to something that it's not. This isn't just a "personal issue." This isn't sudden self awareness that I am unprepared for. This isn't growing pains.

This is a complete upheaval of everything I've ever thought myself to be. This is finding yourself in the middle of a dark hole so deep, escape is seemingly impossible. This is waking up every day and trying to find the forest through the trees when your head has turned into a battleground against yourself.

This is me, terrified. This is me, currently. And this is me, just trying to get better.