In retrospect, of course, I should have seen it coming. I hadn’t been feeling well for months; my appetite and sleep on a steady decline. A persistent feeling of impending doom. Frequent outbursts of panic-fueled crying. The night of March 29th, lying in my bed, inconsolable, wanting to not be here anymore. Waking up the next morning feeling worse. I couldn’t bear to be on this planet for one more second feeling this way. Fantasizing about the narcotics in my night table drawer, left over from surgery. A Google search: how many would I need to just make it all stop?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what it’s like to live with generalized anxiety. As one friend put it after my blog went live, “Now you’re really out of the closet.” It’s true. I’ve spilled my mental health secrets  - and despite some initial uneasiness about what the response would be, I’m happy that I have. Because just like when I wrote about living with depression, I’ve been touched and overwhelmed about how many people have reached out to thank me- for describing what they’ve been living with, for breaking the silence, for exposing a serious and debilitating disease that so few people understand. That is exactly my goal in writing about my struggles publicly - to create a community and let others know they’re not alone. Selfishly, it helps me enormously too, to know I’m in the excellent company of my fellow anxiety-sufferers. Together, I believe, we can help break the stigma and help each other cope when things seem dark.

FullSizeRender-1Growing up, I didn’t always get a lot of positive reinforcement. When I was young, I longed to be acknowledged; to be praised and told that I was great or smart or funny. Despite this lack of affirmation, I still somehow managed to develop confidence and a strong sense of self. I learned to become my own cheerleader and to find validation from within.  I’m not exactly sure where this self-assurance came from, but I realized that being strong and fearless were my survival skills.

Mental illness seems to be getting a lot of airplay these days. While we’re still far from a place where it is accepted and legitimized as a genuine health issue, at the very least we’re hearing more about it. Just the other day, we shared...

[caption id="attachment_20390" align="alignleft" width="295"]486870_10151211553601357_1290598133_n When it began. That's me on the left.[/caption] When I was a kid, I couldn’t go to sleep unless I completed a very specific set of nightly routines. I was inexplicably terrified of water dripping from the bathroom tap, so I worked at tightening the faucet until I was sure I was safe. The bathroom light switch had to be flicked on and off exactly 10 times. Each item on my shelves and desk needed to be perfectly aligned and I felt compelled to yell, “Goodnight Ma!”, from my bed at least a dozen times.

[caption id="attachment_21030" align="alignleft" width="300"]www.christinaestebanphotography.com He didn't freak out![/caption] A few weeks ago, I published a blog I’d written about my fight against anxiety and depression. I’d actually written the post a couple of months before it went online, around the time of Robin William’s tragic death. It hung around in the back end of WordPress for a while until I found the nerve to put it out there for the world, or at least the West Island, to see.