Shadows

A Story by Fainne

An inside look at how anxiety and depression can manifest

Poison can be tricky. Sometimes I don’t even feel it until it is too late. It always starts out innocuous at first. I’m a little irritated or I space out while listening to my music on the drive into work. I usually wind up on some mental tangent that as soon as I pull myself away I forget. As the day progresses small things will slowly seem bigger. Like I am dipped in honey and every annoyance or set back is stuck to me for the world to see. Honey isn’t the right way to describe it though. It is a deepening darkness, a shadow that starts at the center of my spine and spreads out smoky tendrils over my skin. It chokes me when I breathe and my heart races at the effort. I can almost see it in the corners of my eyes. Like tunnel vision as the oxygen is cut off. I feel like everyone must see this shadow as it spreads, but of course they don’t. How could they? It isn’t all over my body it is only in my mind.

That's the problem with anxiety and depression. I vacillate between being desperately afraid people will notice and needing them to notice. Society has attached such a stigma around my condition that when I want to acknowledge that I am a little under the weather I can’t because it sounds like a cop out. I think what people continue to misunderstand is that depression isn’t being sad when things don’t go right, although cognitive dissonance means that these things do sometimes have a bigger impact, it is being unable to stop those feeling when everything is just fine. Anxiety isn’t just being worried when your loved ones travel because of the state of the world. It is also being absolutely sure that if you don’t say goodnight to them they will die in the night.

Sometimes my mental health feels like monster in a fairy tale, the kind that only comes out at night. When I acknowledge it and look it square in the face, challenge it to try and destroy me, it backs off a bit. It is frightened away when I shine a light. Sometimes when I face it I am empowered, I use what I’ve learned against the bad thoughts and swirling darkness. Sometimes when I face it I am so exhausted from the fight that I am swallowed whole, at least for a while. I never know which I will be at any given time. What I do try to tell myself is that with the help of my friends and family it will never swallow me entirely. There is always a voice that says I could be wrong, but most days I can be louder than that.