I Stopped Fighting Fire With Fire And Started Fighting Fear With Fear

   In the presence of impatience, I often choose to respond with philosophical sass. I have never met anyone who enjoys waiting in lines, though stamina comes in countless shapes and sizes. Yes, patience is a virtue, but whatever happened to the beauty of the climb? In many scenarios, we may not realize that we are on a journey at all. I certainly wasn't aware that mine had even begun. 

   I have always shared a love-hate relationship with health. Mental and physical health are things that you don't realize you need until one of them slowly slips away. Even worse- when both of them disappear, feeling as if the floor you stand on has, in a split second, collapsed from under you. When the ground you stand on crumbles beneath your seemingly stable stance, you fall with it, but you plummet far further than the material remains. 

   Two years ago, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and generalized anxiety. What nobody tells you about mental health is that although it is a state of being, it is more predominantly a lifestyle. Unless you accept that with growth there is failure, this lifestyle is unsustainable. It has taken me to years to embrace that acceptance truly is the foundation for health. 

   On May 28th, 2021, I was three weeks in to a mental health revamp. At seven a.m. sharp, my eyes lazily opened to my daily alarm. I had changed my alarm from a hostile alert to a relaxing melody, as if my morning meditation was ensuing as my mind awoke to reality. My warm feet slipped out from under my white comforter and onto the cold wood floor of my 64 degree apartment. I made my way to the refrigerator, opened a bottle of Kirkland water, and dropped in three scoops of pink amino acid powder to kick-start my day. 

   I made my daily matcha latte and was eager to lounge on my large, oat-colored couch overlooking Downtown Dallas. I perched my legs onto my marble coffee table, reached for my meditation journal, and began to write. I am a creature of habit, and these small customs had made their way into my daily routine. While they seem minuscule, such patterns had been quite difficult when I had mentally trapped myself in a deep, dark pit of what seemed like hell- my depression. 

   I journaled my daily affirmations and manifestations. TikTok had creeped its way into my life during quarantine, and it never seemed to leave. In it, I found a family of my own who created visual content of how they turned their mental struggles around through manifestations. If they could do it, I believed I could.

   I frequently found myself writing about the challenges of external affirmations, rather than those that I found within. My parents constantly told me what they thought would be helpful, such as, "you're educated, you're beautiful, you're young, the world is at your feet, you have to get up and go get it." These affirmations did the opposite of intended. 

   Depression is cognitive quicksand. This quicksand sucked me in just enough so that while it felt I was suffocating, my eyes peaked out with intense vision of what I wanted so desperately, but physically could not attain. Everyday felt as if I had made my way to the starting line of a marathon; when the gun shot and the race began, my feet had been nailed to ground, desire overwhelmed my entire being, and all I could see were the quickly disappearing bodies running into the horizon. To be mentally stuck was to be physically stuck- at least in my book. 

   At one o'clock on that beautiful May afternoon, I drove ten minutes north to my best friends apartment. I had just begun exercising as a part of my daily routine, and my friend Abby had encouraged me to take her dogs on a walk around her neighborhood. My bright pink leggings and Adidas sneakers were jumping with excitement to get out of my head and into the sun. 

   Abby's two, 40-pound rescue dogs led us down the trail at The Village apartments, located between Skillman and Greenville on Southwestern. We stopped for iced coffee, rested at the dog park while they played, and sauntered along the pond while watching other dogs chase geese. The positivity motivated me, it simultaneously stimulated my mind and body, mentally and physically proving to myself that I can in fact, do it. 

   Then it happened. Part of anxiety I experience is due to a condition I have had since a little kid, called Vasovagel Syncope. I've fainted numerous times while having blood taken, as well as having my eye pressure checked at the doctors. My blood sugar dropped, my legs became numb, and my sight began to blur. But what happened next was something I had never experienced.

   I have an iron stomach, but a sensitive vision and head in the presence of fluorescent or harsh lighting, causing lightheadedness. If you told me that I had been submerged underwater during a tsunami, I would've believed you. As if I were engulfed in a tornado, my eyes began running left and right, followed by face muscle convulsion that quickly spread to the rest of my body. The last thing I saw before I seized onto the concrete sidewalk was a sharp, circular rainbow that is still engraved into my memory.

   The next thing I remember is an EMT asking me my name. I looked over and saw none of my belongings, only a blood pressure monitor wrapped around my forearm and the softness of a cool cloth draped across my forehead. My stay at the hospital is a blur. At some point, Abby had dropped off my tote with my belongings, but she wasn't allowed to stay. The loneliness in the ER was worse, especially because I was physically and mentally lost. 

   The doctors told me I had had a Grande Mal Seizure. I had an EKG, CT Scan, and Glucose levels taken at my 5-hour long visit. The nurse gave me an Ativan when it came time to take my blood, and I refused to continue after the first glucose test, fussing that this was a bad time to have a fainting spell. I had called my parents, my best friends, and my boyfriend at the hospital, whom all were out of town at the time. I wasn't just lonely. I was alone. 

   A seizure was the last thing I expected to have during a time when I thought I had a hold on my mental health. While each day I got better, I felt worse. The next two months entailed a series of procedures at the cardiologist and neurologist offices. But it wasn't that I had had a seizure that caused dense anxiety: it was the fear of having another one. 

   The fear of the unknown swallowed my once free-spirit. While I couldn't drive, walk into a pharmacy or a grocery store, and even get out of bed because my limbs had gone numb, I had to make changes to my lifestyle in order to recover. 

   Lifestyle changes included cutting out caffeine, alcohol, artificial sugars, and most importantly, fear. These changes seem minor, but in the mind of a 22-year-old woman living in a big city with mental, and now physical blockage, thoughts of disaster went through my mind while undergoing these significant alterations. I wondered, how am I supposed to wake up in the morning without caffeine? How am I supposed to not feel left out during social events without alcohol? How am I supposed to treat myself on a cheat day without ice cream? How do I just become un-afraid? 

   To my self nine-weeks ago: time. Just as morning matcha, meditation, and journaling had become habits, so did these new changes. No more soda, but a gallon of water a day, and very clear skin. No more alcohol, but enticingly clear thoughts and productive early mornings. No more sugar, but a passion for cooking with whole foods and clean ingredients. I lost some, but I won a lot more.

   I needed to maintain this new lifestyle in order to properly recover, but surprisingly, cutting out these components was the easy part. The hard part was integrating them back into my system while sustaining a mentally and physically healthy lifestyle. This is the part of my journey where I had to overcome my fear of fear. 

   You can't help someone if they can't help themselves. The doctors couldn't help me if I didn't help myself. My desire to find a balance of my mind and body overrode my yearn to dive back into my previous lifestyle, considering it meant not being entirely healthy.

   My doctor's officially cleared me on August 3rd, 2021, with the final verdict that my seizure was most likely a one-time occurrence. I accepted that I can't ask questions that there are not answers to when it concerns my health, but I can maintain the balanced lifestyle I had created for myself. This new lifestyle is one of moderation. I can have a scoop ice cream when I deserve it. I can have a glass of wine at Friday night dinners. I can have a tall Starbuck's latte instead of a venti. Moderation has become my middle name. 

   The process of overcoming fear is one that I wasn't aware of when it occurred. It didn't happen overnight, for it took time. For fourteen days I wore a heart monitor due to the findings of a heart murmur. There was a two hour long EEG, which usually last for thirty minutes. During a forty-two minute MRI, I had an injection put into my forearm, which triggered my Vasovagel, though the IV was removed upon my request before I could faint. Week after week I visited with my psychiatrist and therapist to slowly but surely work on my depression and anxiety, which had stooped to the lowest levels they had ever been during the first few weeks after my seizure. 

   Despite the constant appointments and frustration over my health, I found that I healed during the more recent weeks, of which maintaining a new routine became part of my lifestyle, rather than inhabiting the lifestyle I wanted. What I had strived for health-wise, I attained when they became a part of my personal normalcy. In short, I overcame fear when I was no longer scared to be afraid.  

   The journey became unbearable when I could not see my destination, but here is the simple glory of the trek to the top: the physical and mental strength of what I had endured on the way up, and the shining view of what was to come. Patience truly is a virtue, and in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the "only thing we have to fear is fear itself."