Reading my journals

I just finished reading my first journal. The one I wrote when I started into depression. It began at the end of March 2008, and went to mid-October. From my first appointment with my therapist, to the diagnosis of adjustment disorder, through my first panic attack, my subsequent climb out of depressive symptoms in the summer, and the beginning of my descent into full-blown Major Depressive Disorder.

I’m reading to refresh my memory of what I felt at my worst. I’m reading to see God’s faithfulness to me in my angst. I’m reading to discover my symptoms and how I behaved in my depressed state.

I had forgotten that my sleep schedule was all messed up. During the beginning of my experience, I repeatedly woke at 4:30 or 5:00am each morning. That is not me; I sleep until 7:30am most mornings. But I didn’t see that sleep disruption at the time – I just went with it. Looking back on it now, I recognize it as a classic symptom of depression – a change in sleep patterns.

I remembered that I used to drive to a boat landing to be alone with my loud music and the thoughts that made it past the beat-beat-beat in my earbuds. I didn’t realize that the pattern had started all the way back in the beginning; my memory told me that I didn’t develop that habit until I was severely clinically depressed. But my journal tells another story – I found respite at the water’s edge early on in my journey.

I learned in re-reading my journal that several of my distinct memories of depression actually occurred during that first stint – when I was diagnosed with “adjustment disorder with anxiety and depressive symptoms.” Many of the encounters that I read about were early-on, not much later in my experience, as I had previously thought. Funny how vivid those first memories are.

I’m glad I’ve waited until now to read through the journal. And I intend to read all of them from the first seven years of my depression – that’s 12.5 books of writing. But waiting was a good idea – I’m emotionally stable enough – mentally healthy enough – to go back to those memories without getting sucked into the emotion of them. I can handle them.

My First Panic Attack

The morning sun was shining out from behind an occasional cloud. The air was cool – it was a typical Wisconsin Springtime day. The indirect sunlight meant I wore sunglasses, but the sun wasn’t glaring, just a little hazy.

The men were meeting at the north side Perkins to carpool to the airport, which was closer than all those days I drove him there. He’d been traveling a lot lately, but I was used to it. No big deal.

After he got into their car, I pulled out of the parking lot. I turned right instead of left and headed toward the water. My heart was beating a bit fast, and my stomach felt a little funny. “What if something happens?” I drove in a circle and back around into the parking lot. Now my hands were shaking, so I clutched the steering wheel a little more tightly. “What if something happens to the plane?” “Nothing will happen!” “But what will you do if something does?  What will you do? Who will you call first? What if..? What about..?”

The thoughts came suddenly, not even distinctly. They were more like a flash across my brain – in and out, here and gone. But they were enough to start the panic process.

I suddenly needed to walk, somewhere, anywhere, and fast. Walk fast. I pulled back out of the parking lot, and my hands shook harder. I drove down to Riverside Park and looked for a parking spot at the end of the walkway. Now my chest felt like it was shaking, like my whole body was going to convulse from the center.

I got out of the car, dropped the keys in my pocket, and grabbed my phone. The sun came out from behind the clouds, and I could feel it heating my skin. It shone down on my face, and reflected off the water and back up into my eyes. I squinted, even with my sunglasses on. The water was beautiful with the sparkle of the sun shining, with pinpricks of very bright light as it hit the river’s ripples. I hardly noticed.

My head was pounding, my hands were shaking, my heart was thumping hard and my breathing was getting shallow, as if there was a weight on my chest. I tried to dial my therapist’s office, but my fingers were too fat for the correct numbers. I tried again, and got his voice mail. I was desperate to hear his voice, to talk to him and have him talk me down off the ledge I was clinging to. His voice mail message helped – I could at least hear him. I stumbled over words. “I’m not sure what’s wrong. Please call me. I can’t think. I can’t breathe.” I hung up, dialed again, and hung up again.

Now my hands were shaking almost too much to hold the phone, my eyes were filling with tears, and I couldn’t catch my breath. My thoughts were coming too quickly to stop them, all negative. All ridiculous. Of course nothing was going to happen. No reason to plan for it. Stop that. Actually, it was more like, “Nothing…plan for it..stop.” all in one thought. No individual words or coherent ideas.

I remember praying, but the prayers were like my thoughts – arrows shot towards heaven with no clear-cut thought other than “Father God, please help me!” Later, I remembered how the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when we don’t know what to pray (Romans 8:26), and I was thankful for that.

There were other people in the park and walking on the path. I couldn’t really hear them, though, and hardly saw them. It’s as if they were muffled and fuzzy, and their words were unintelligible over the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.

And then all of a sudden, it was gone. The panic, the racing heart, the sweating – stopped. I was better. Exhausted, but better.

I went back to my car and sat in the driver’s seat, trying to figure out what had just happened.  How had I lost the abililty to reason? Why did my body and thoughts go spiraling? I had been trying to breathe, to focus, but there was no way – I was out of control.

I sat in the car, trying to sort out my first panic attack, but not realizing that’s what it was. The sun continued to warm the dark seats, and I got hot from sitting there, so I drove to work, a little shaky yet. I was very tired and my legs were heavy, like I had just run a great distance. I slowly entered the elevator – there was no way I could walk the stairs to my office. Once I sat at the desk, I typed “Panic Attack” in the Google Search Bar, and read all about what had just happened. Sure enough.