My name is Kristin G., and I have been living with Depression and Anxiety diagnoses for 25 years. Of course, I have been living with Depression and Anxiety minus the diagnoses for even longer. I can't tell you how many scenes from my childhood make better sense when remembered through that particular filter.
I was first diagnosed after suffering terrifying, life-altering panic attacks right after my graduation from high school. Because of the attacks (I did not know what they were at the time), I came home from my first year of school at Hartwick College after only a week or so. I thought I was dying. The night before I went home on a medical deferment, I became hysterical and was confined to a bed in the college's infirmary. I remember being convinced there was a large blood clot traveling down a vein in my finger towards my heart. I could see the bulge the clot was making as it moved down my finger.
Reality had gone.
Mercifully I was given a tranquilizer, probably something like Valium or Xanax, and the hysteria subsided, and I slept. Sanity returned.
I don't remember packing to leave the next day, but I very clearly recall the ride home in the car with my father. He had to drive four hours to get me. I was deeply ashamed and afraid, and when I tried to artificially lighten the mood by making a joke about how my younger brother would be dismayed to have to share his car with me, my father shut me down angrily. I know now that my father was scared, but at the time I was incapable of such an insight. I put my head down on my pillow and cried.
Eventually I did graduate from college, and since then I have had other struggles and successes. I don't often feel satisfied with the quality of it, but I am living a life here.
