My Invisible Demon

By Sara Davison 

Photography by Diego Ph, on Unsplash  

Most people see me, Sara, as the cute, bubbly girl who is always smiling, always cracking a joke or making any small-scale inconvenience out to be a catastrophe.  And you know what, that’s who I am, that’s who I have always been, and I am happy with that.  But what most people don’t know is the thing that happened to me on 22^nd December 2008 at about 1:00am.

It had been a normal day, I can’t remember anything bad or life-changing happening.  I think I had been working at my part-time job in a café, then I had gone home.  I had dinner, watched TV and went to bed about midnight.  But that wasn’t the end of my night.  That was the night I had my first ever panic attack.

I awoke abruptly, as if I was reacting to a loud noise but when I looked around, everything seemed normal.  The only odd thing was the way I felt.  My entire body was trembling, and my heart was racing so fast.  I frantically jumped out of bed and tried to shake it off.  It felt like there were ants crawling all over my body and I had to run to get away from them.  I remember looking at myself in the mirror in a blind panic and running through to my parents’ bedroom where I sort of fainted onto their bed.  As you can imagine, my poor parents, who had been peacefully sleeping, were shot into full blown panic mode and were immediately on the phone to NHS24 assuming something was seriously wrong with me.  They went through all the routine questions, the conclusion was there absolutely nothing sinister wrong with me.  The conclusion was, a panic attack.  A panic attack? I didn’t even know what that was. 10 years on I am still learning about it.

Without sounding too cheesy, that was the night that changed my life.  My whole world was turned upside down and throughout the years I have been introduced to Diazepam, Citalopram, Fluoxetine and some other med that didn’t work for me at all.  On top of that, I have been to therapy, counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, hypnosis, meditation and yoga.  I have literally tried everything to get rid of this horrible mental disease.  The conclusion I have come to so far is this is not something that just goes simply away.  It is an illness I must work through every Goddamn day.  It will steal happiness for chunks of life and then some days it will throw a bone and let me enjoy myself and live a little.  I like those days.

The panic attacks seemed to subside once I had managed to convince myself that I was in fact not dying.  I don’t really know how I managed to do that because panic attacks trick you into thinking you are having a heart attack or you are about to be attacked by a giant bear.

In a nutshell, it sucks.  And what sucks even more? It’s best friend, depression. I would class my illness as anxiety disorder with depression.

Suffering from both depression and anxiety is infuriating because it’s a mixture of feeling everything and nothing.

The thing that gets me most about this horrible disease is the lack of control I feel I have over my thoughts and my behaviours.  When I am really anxious I turn into this completely different person if I don’t catch it early enough.  Ever seen The Exorcist? No joke, that is what it feels like, like I have been possessed and an exorcism needs to be performed to get the demon out of me.  It can take hours or even days, and when the demon finally leaves my poor human soul, I am tired for days, my eyes burn from the hysterical crying, and I sit dwelling in my useless shell of a body wondering what the hell is wrong with me.  It never gets easier. And then of course, the depression kicks in.  My head becomes filled with negative thoughts. Obviously, from this article I like a wee joke but this is something I can’t joke about because it makes me so unbelievably sad. Depression, for me, is like being stuck in a dark hole with no way to get out.  I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.  I wish I could say I see progress but, at the moment, I really don’t.  It’s something I am currently struggling with daily.  Even writing this part is making my eyes water.

Don’t get me wrong, on my good days I will kick start the day with a good old dose of motivation which is in the form of coffee and my homemade pancakes.  I will drive to work and pray it’s a good day.  I will sing my heart out in the car and imagine myself as this empowering woman who other women look up-to.  Sounds stupid but it makes me feel good.  I tend to go to the gym when I am feeling like this. Having anxiety can be helped massively by exercising but when you have depression, like me, it will quickly convince you to stare into space for the rest of the day and remember that one time you let everyone down 7 years ago.  Depression really is a bitch.

I am now 28 years old.  I have a great job, an amazing family, a cat called Daisy and my own home.  These are the things that everyone sees.  Everyone thinks wow she’s so lucky, she must be so happy.  Wrong.  So wrong.  I am a 28 year old woman with an invisible disease which challenges me every day of my life.  Have I thought of suicide? Yes.  Have I thought of packing everything up and moving as far away as possible? Of course. But I never will, because I have so many positive things in my life which are a medicine that keep me going. Every. Single. Day.