Whatever It Is, It’s Already Here

“It’s OK. Whatever it is, it’s already here. Let me feel it.”

During my second week in an outpatient psychiatric program, we did a mindfulness meditation which involved listening to the repetition of this mantra alongside slow, deep breaths and quiet music. Months later, those are still the words I say to myself when I feel like the walls are beginning to creep back up again, when the feelings become bigger than I am.

My anxiety and depression didn’t come gradually. They didn’t slowly introduce themselves into my life, to my family, my friends. They just showed up on my doorstep one day, unannounced, and began unpacking their things.

In 2009, I became physically ill with symptoms that mirrored Crohn’s disease. Several years of doctors, hospitals, medications, and life-altering symptoms taught me I had no choice but to be resilient. In the spring of 2013, I was finally diagnosed with a rare disease called Mastocytic Enterocolitis. Last month, I was diagnosed with another rare and competing disorder called Waldmann’s disease. On a daily basis, I experience more physical pain and uncomfortable GI symptoms than I ever could have imagined. What I can and cannot eat, what my body will or will not reject, the levels of pain and nausea in my body … it all changes on a daily, or sometimes even hourly, basis.

At best, it’s challenging, and at worst, it’s impossible to live with.

Last year, it became too much for me to bear. I didn’t want to do it anymore.

I wanted to be done. I wanted out.

I was used to suffering through horrible physical symptoms and their ramifications; but the mental ones were different. They were overwhelming. They were painful. They were too hard to talk about (this from a girl who has had to describe most bodily functions to dozens of doctors and hundreds of acquaintances, friends, and family members).

I burrowed. I folded into myself. I thought that I had to be depressed and anxious alone. I thought I couldn’t tell anyone that I desperately wanted to end my life.

I desperately wanted to end my life.

How do you come back from that? How do you push the thought away, for good?

I’ll start by telling you this: You can’t do it alone. One of the things that has always resonated most with me from TWLOHA is the statement “people need other people.” There might not be anything more true in this world, especially when dealing with mental health.

My journey to recovery has been rocky. It’s been complicated. It has involved so, so many people, without whom I honestly might not still be standing. It required love and support (from myself and others) and a significant amount of radical acceptance—a concept I learned in group therapy.

“It’s OK. Whatever it is, it’s already here. Let me feel it.”

I learned that it was OK, and necessary, to validate my feelings, both physical and emotional. I learned that a lot of days involve wrestling with myself; sometimes accepting that what is just simply is, other times feeling completely oppressed by the things I am experiencing. Most importantly, I learned that even when I didn’t want to fight for myself, there were a lot of other people in my life who I wanted to fight for. People who wanted, or rather, needed me to keep fighting.

Sometimes I remember that I have a story, which isn’t over yet; in truth, I think parts of it have just begun. But most of the time I remember that the people I love and cherish also have stories, and I want to be a part of those. Marriages, and families, and careers, and dreams coming true … I want to be here. I want to see them. Let me feel it.

The truth is, I hope to have the same.

But it took me a long time to want that. I’m not going to lie, it was exhausting, and challenging, and overwhelming. Recovery wasn’t anything like the straight line I imagined. It was two steps forward, then one or two, even three steps backward. It was hard as hell. And sometimes it felt like it was never going to get easier, that it was never going to hurt less.

The thing to remember is that your life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Whatever you’re feeling in this moment, know that your life matters. Your story matters. You are important to someone, to many-ones. Never doubt that.

Wherever you are today, right now, put your hand over your heart.

Feel that? Your heartbeat … You’re here.

And wherever you are, you’re not alone. I can promise you that. Someone, somewhere is feeling something like what you’re feeling.

Tonight, maybe that someone, somewhere, is me.