So this is how it feels to be a happy girl.

April of 2012. A few weeks and some odd days before graduating from college, I was sitting in class when it hit all at once: heart racing, chest full, throat tight, and a flash flood of sweat from every pore. Panic set in despite the relaxed energy of the room. I felt both isolated and exposed. Out of shock and fear of drawing attention to myself, I sat frozen in my chair and silently retraced the word calm until class ended. Strung out by my first panic attack, I lacked the sense to see it for what it was – and never did I expect it might happen again.



When I imagine the best version of myself – the one I value most – it’s the uninhibited 9-year-old with tangled hair who was always up to something. She devoured books, played in the dirt, and got into trouble on the daily. She was bold, yet sweet. Most notably, she acted without thinking too hard about things. She was a happy girl. And while this identity was bound to change with the passing of my childhood, its a loss I sometimes contemplate when I’m fraught with anxiety. Even as an insecure teenager, I still managed to consider myself to be a kind person; imaginative; a good listener. But somewhere along the line, I began to sense an impasse between the way I claimed to be and the way I actually was. By the time I turned 17, it was becoming harder and harder to be those things – kind; imaginative; a good listener – while I remained oblivious to the signs of anxiety that had begun to show their teeth.



It’s ugly. Rather, it makes you feel ugly – on the inside and the outside. It leaves you inept to foster grace in your relationships with others if there isn’t a trace of it in your relationship with yourself. It causes you to stare at another person and wonder if they, too, have days when they’re dying to crawl out of their skin. It’s the reason you leave a gathering earlier than planned, knowing full well that you came off as a rigid shrew because you could hardly manifest a fake smile. That’s what I resent most about how anxiety takes form in my life: ultimate self-centeredness. I’ve lost friends because of it – people I really loved – and I couldn’t blame them. The relationships I cherish most are the ones most vulnerable to my own sabotage.



When things get brash, as they often do, it can be difficult to draw the line between the actions that stem from an anxious mind and those that are truly my own. Much of the perspective I’ve gained is from someone who not only helped me accept my anxiety, but has maintained the steadfast patience to ride it out alongside me for the past three years. Three years of unexpected triggers, emotional meltdowns, and irrational patterns of thought. Three years of what often feels like the same recurring conversations after my ability to reason has gone offline. Someone with the strength to say ‘I love you’ after each Jekyll and Hyde transformation, despite that we both know it could happen again tomorrow.



It’s taken me a long time to face the music, and even longer to do something about it. Hypnotherapy. Numbing with partying. Meditation. Acupuncture. Vitamins. Months with the wrong therapist. Months with the right therapist – a woman who, in addition to also being the youngest of three sisters, shares my name and birthday by 20 years to the date. When I started seeing Molly, she told me I’d been living with a level of anxiety close to 8 or 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, untreated, for close to a decade.



After a handful of sessions, she urged that I was the prime example of someone who could benefit from anti-anxiety medication. I refused outright. I feared the chance of it helping was equal to the chance that it could make things worse. What if it exasperated my mood swings? What if I lost my personality in the process? What if I would depend on it for the rest of my life? I had plenty of reasons like these – nearly all of which were contrived from my imagination.



6 months of treatment had passed with sparse results when I reluctantly agreed to Citalopram. I began taking it on my birthday to commemorate a fresh start (read: because I’m Type A and expressly sentimental). I exhibited zero side effects – which is ideal, but it led me to believe there would be no discernible improvement in the way I felt. About a month after it had been in my system, though, I became aware of a subtle change in the way I was reacting to my usual triggers. That is to say, it felt less involuntary; less compromising. And as more and more of these changes began to reveal themselves, I was empowered by a feeling that had long since been absent in my life: Contentment. After years of wanting nothing more than to to tell myself, This is how it feels to be a happy girl, I did so without fear that it would disappear tomorrow.



And the good kept coming. Spring hit. I started jogging with my dog for a half mile twice a day. I started stretching after the jogs, and noticed I was becoming more flexible without a crazy workout regimen to inundate my schedule. The muscles in my forehead, shoulders, and hands no longer felt strained. I started drinking 85 ounces of water a day. I started smiling at passersby. And I felt an overwhelming re-appreciation for those who have waded knee-deep with me through all of this. For every backslide that happens from this point forward – the kind everyone has from time to time – I have proof that I’ll be able to return to a place of stability. It’s only now, at 26 years old, that I feel in control of my adult life for the very first time.



I’ve since become prone to discuss anxiety with anyone who will listen. For one thing, it’s the most truthful answer I can give when asked, What have you been working on lately? For another, it seems to take the power out of it. But while I credit some of my gains from bringing it out into the open, there are inherent tradeoffs – like appearing weak; a work in progress; failure to launch. In spite of this, I’ve continued to examine it among friends, family, and even those I maybe shouldn’t – colleagues, my boss, my boss’s boss, and fellow wedding guests. The fact of the matter is, I have arrived.



May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Keep the conversation going.

