Hey, first post here. My name is Jay, I'm gonna rant and basically tell my life story of the passed 2 years. This will be pretty long, sorry if It's hard to read. It's difficult to talk about in person, but I wanted to tell my story, hoping it helps to write it out. By the way it gets pretty dark, it's been a hard couple years, everything got bad, so if that might upset or trigger you then read carefully.
Lately I've been having some serious anxiety flare ups. I've been grieving the death of my 20 year old little sister, she died on 02/14/2017, valentines day. She was my best friend, we did everything together and told each other everything, we were totally inseparable.
Her death was sudden, her kidneys shut down suddenly and she died a day later in the hospital while in a coma. It was devastating, the entire family was completely shook. I lost my best friend, my platonic soul mate, it felt like I had a part of me violently ripped from my chest, and it doesn't heal.
I had to see my beloved little sister Morgan as just a lifeless body, dressed like normal and almost looking normal, but there's no life, her body is here in front of me, but she's gone. I carried her casket and put her in the ground, along with the other men of the family, mom and grandma putting on brave faces for our younger sister abby who just lost her only sister, the person she looked up to.
Life was a haze, Morgans death changed me, it felt like I wasn't awake, everything was foggy and dreamlike, slow. But I have random moments of being percectly lucid, as if I suddenly sobered up, and the bad thoughts rush my head. My mind is total chaos, it feels entirely overwhelming, a storm of anxiety hits me and suddenly I can't deal with anything, interacting with people or doing anything remotely stressful is impossible without a full blown anxiety attack.
I isolate myself from the world, except from my girlfriend B, who is severely depressed because of her job and a new living situation with her cousin that is very stressful for her. She suffers from severe anxiety that is untreated. I fight through my haze and anxiety to be strong for her, but she refuses to talk to somebody or get treated for her problems, and left me after it all became too much for her to handle, 2 months after my sister passed.
I was destroyed by the breakup, I was madly in love with her, my entire life was falling apart. I was unemployed for a couple months before this, I got a new job a week after the breakup. I worked as much as possible, usually 60 or more hours a week and weekends. Focusing on work kept me going, kept me from falling into a blackhole of sadness, that horrible dark pit where you can't find a way out. I barely slept, I woke up, got high, went to work, came home and got high again, then hung out with my dad, who I lived with at the time, until he went tp bed, then I'd get high and play videogames with my Skype friends that I've known for years, until either I passed out, or it was time for work again. I frequently drank, got wasted on my days off. I did any and all drugs I could get my hands on, often hard drugs to keep me going without needing to sleep. Sleeping is the most difficult thing in my life now. Because you can't stop yourself from thinking when you're lying awake, alone in a bed made for 2, being tortured by everything that's gone wrong while the bottomless silence eats you alive.
I started seeing somebody else, it wasn't very serious. Then suddenly yet again the world took someone from me, like a sick cosmic joke, the world tried to take my father from me, the only person left I could talk to, the last person in my life that was stopping me from sinking all the way down, was in a medically induced coma after his heart stopped without warning while he was watching a race at a racetrack.
Once again I was standing in a hospital room beside a comatose family member, the doctors told us he had almost no chance of survival, and if he survived it would be nearly impossible for him to not have suffered massive brain damage. I had to discuss with my mother how much time would have to pass before we were willing to pull the plug on his life support, which he had individually told both of us privately that he wanted to be done in this event. He told both of us that he never wants to be a vegetable requiring life support. We decided to wait it out for the time being.
The same night this happened, the woman I started seeing, Liz, was very worried about me, and packed her things to come stay with me while I was dealing with all of this, probably to make sure I didn't hurt myself, and if she hadn't been there for me 100% during that time period, then I'd probably be long dead. She saved my life, she spent every minute with me, until miraculously my father was recovering. After being in a medically induced coma for 2 weeks, my dad recovered enough to leave the coma, he was recovered enough to go home after another week, and a surgery to implant an emergency defibrillator, with no brain damage at all. The doctors called it a miracle.
Dad and I spent tons of time together watching Netflix and just relaxing, laughing at life, he went back to work 2 weeks later.
Life started looking up, with ups and downs. I started hopping from job to job, finding it difficult to work at 1 place for long, I didn't like getting too comfortable. I was still a very active drug user, functioning but headed towards a bad future. Until for complicated reasons I can't even fully explain, I left Liz and our 5 month relationship to be with my ex again. My old girlfriend Bea and I are now happily engaged to be married about a year later, a blissfully happy, amazing relationship that has made me nearly whole again after the tragedy.
I say nearly whole, because my anxiety lately has been so bad that it's been majorly effecting my life for about 3 months, since the first anniversary of my sisters death. She would have turned 21 years old last december, my little sister would have been a grown woman. I think about her everyday, often resulting in me sitting on the couch, or lying in bed with my fiance, and quietly sobbing for sometimes hours. My craving to do drugs has been at an all time high, I've been sober minus a single minor relapse, for over a year now, but I crave drugs so bad I shake sometimes. I smoke regularly, cigarettes and weed, as well as maintain a high level caffeine addiction all in order to fight off the cravings.
I'm generally happy, I love my fiance more than life and the world itself, and I have a couple of great friends that inspire me to have faith in the world, to adventure through a scary world with, but, when I'm alone, without a single distraction to keep my mind occupied, she is always on my mind, and remembering all of those long nights we spent together, talking about our lives and problems and everything else, and knowing that I will never have another one of those nights with her again for the rest of my life, it makes that wound bleed again, it weighs on my entire body and mind and spirit. I'm fighting everyday to prevent that feeling from crushing me under the weight of unending grief. I'm fighting for the day that when that chaos threatens to take me under, I'm able to find the courage to face it without getting lost in the whirlwind of life.
Thank you for listening to my story, after typing all of this I feel a lot of relief, talking about it face to face with somebody is too difficult for me most of the time, so I suffer alone fearing that my problems would push people away from me. Seeing my own words describing the way I felt and feel makes me understand myself more, my thoughts aren't so scrambled and hard to manage when I understand what's going on with me.
I'll check on this thread tonight, I hope reading my story will in some way help atleast 1 person who is struggling like I have, it's hard to suffer alone.
Should I be sharing my sicknote/diagnosis of anxiety and depression with my employer?
Grief and Depression are not a good combo
Grief-Triggered Anxiety
My wife has terrible anxiety and depression
Depression and grief 🥲
