Last Week

The moment I heard my parents had died was, without question, the worst moment of my life. I was home alone, washing the dishes, when there was a knock at the door. Behind the door was a creature. It spoke softly, and directly.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your parents passed away in a crash tonight.” 

The creature then disappeared into the darkness, giving no further detail, just the dreadful thought. 

My parents were gone, and I was alone. This would be the worst moment of my life. 

The Lion and the Bear. 

Most people would find it tough to figure out what the worst moment of their life was. It’s not tough for me. The Teletubbies was a show created in 1997 and ran for five dark years until its end in 2001. This show scarred me for life. 

There was one episode in particular that involved a Lion and a Bear, that I can’t bear describing. All you need to know is that it was banned across the globe, re-edited, re-released, and banned again. I don’t remember my exact age the first time I was exposed to it, but its horrifying sound effects flood my brain whenever I hear the music of Mozart. I am not sure why. 

I dream quite a lot, for a human. The other day, a friend of mine told me that we forget 95% of our dreams within ten minutes of waking (citation void). This fact blew my mind, not because it was interesting or whatever, but because I can tell you, detail by detail, what my first dream was. 

I am in bed. The night light is off, that’s strange. I look over to the door, looks normal to me.  But what’s that noise? A rumbling sound slowly creeps up on me, louder and louder until it’s deafening, it is the lion, it’s running down the hallway, I need to hide, but I can’t move, I try to lift my blanket over my head, I am too weak, it bursts through the door, “hello”, it pounces onto me, claws sharpened, mouth gnashing, and lets out a thunderous roar, I wake up, in bed again, if I run to mum and dad’s room the lion will get me, so I stay in bed, drenched in piss and fear.  

I had this dream, every night, for what felt like years. All thanks to that cursed videotape of the Teletubbies that my loving mother thought I liked. Don’t even get me started on Noo-noo the vacuum cleaner. 

So, yeah, toddlerhood sucked. A succession of worst moments every night, it’s hard to believe things could get any worse. 

7.1 + Friends. 

As I grew up, these moments transformed, becoming slightly more physical. Sixteen days before my 10th birthday, I had the lion dream again. This one was different, my older brother featured, screaming at me to get out of bed. Nice try Lion, this is one of your tricks, isn’t it?

I really, really wish it was. 

I was in the prime age group to be mentally wrecked – during the first earthquake we experienced in Canterbury. And it wasn’t just the first tremor, it was the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, and the seventh, and the eighth, and the ninth, the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, the dozen thousandth, that followed. All of a sudden, every day had its own worst moments.

When these moments happen every day, for three or so years, you begin to live with a constant sense of dread. I lived on edge, no longer scared of the lion in the hallway, rather the lion beneath. I lived in so much fear that it began to have a physical impact on my body. I was exhausted, and sleep became a forgotten dream. I was diagnosed with Adrenal Fatigue, worn out by stress at 13 years old. 

That is the end of the story. 

Tum. 

Growing up, I attended a fairly small school. I was fairly smart, fairly good at football, fairly good at running, fairly popular, etc. I was even the Head Boy in Year Ten. Whether the position was due to my skills as a leader, or was due to there only being three boys to choose from, I will never know.

It must have been around that time where I was told there are two types of people, introverts, and extroverts. Some find energy in the crowd. They enjoy talking to lots of people, and find it easy to make friends. Then there are the introverts, the ones who are fully capable of doing those things, but would rather not. I remember learning this and saying “oh yeah, I’m definitely an introvert.” 

For our last three years of high school, we were sent to a larger school (that I will call Gehenna, to save confusion). Our class of 15 was now a part of 150. 

Now, the lust to be loved is a natural characteristic of the 15-year-old. Whether they admit it or not. There is always a voice in the back of their head, whispering, “hey, do something that makes these people like you”. And it’s fair enough; everyone wants to be liked. The most efficient way to be liked is to be friends with people. The more friends you have, the easier it is to be introduced to new people, and the more welcome you feel in the community.

I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Gehenna was a whole different ball game. You would go from class to class, and in these classes, there were different groups of people. I didn’t talk to many people without being spoken to first. But, I thought I started fairly well, for an introvert. 

That was until I got sick. 

It is Term Two, two weeks left, period two, Wednesday. I am sitting in Accounting, a subject I truly adore. All of a sudden, it feels like I’m about to fall through the floor. The strength in my legs runs away. My head jumps into a wave pool. It feels like I am driving backwards through a tunnel. Then the nausea hits. I manage to stand up. I think I need to go, should probably say that out loud, “I think I need to go”. 

I didn’t do any Accounting for two months. 

The doctors could not explain it. I had a scan to rule out cancer, and another to rule out pregnancy. I did glucose tests, lactose tests, and blood tests, blood tests, blood tests. Nothing returned to suggest sickness. I was asked questions, is it a sharp pain? No, it’s quite soft. Is it anywhere else? No, just here. How is Gehenna going? That can’t be relevant, it’s fine. How are your stools? Surely that’s even less relevant.

All we knew was that sometimes, I felt awful. It got so bad one night, I ended up in the hospital. 

A few weeks into Term Three, I started to feel better. “I’ll go to Gehenna tomorrow,” I thought to myself. The first period was drama, plus it was a Friday, I could probably get through one day. I made it all of five minutes. 

I was missing too much school. It was generally just nausea, and I hadn’t full-on vomited as of yet. So, it got to the point where I had to force myself to go to Gehenna. The sickness was worse in the mornings, so I started with half-days. It was hell, but I pushed through to the end of the year. Heck, I even managed to make a few friends along the way. 

Year 12 was less eventful, I still got the stomach aches, but not as often. It would tend to flare up on certain days, but it didn’t seem triggered by anything. I was just going about my day, and there was nothing I was doing that would make a person this nauseous. 

In the first week of Year 13, our year group adventured on a camp. It was an adventure, not in the sense that it tested us practically, rather, our patience. There were no real camp activities. Instead, the staff decided to present a series of lectures. 

The content of the lectures centred around us and our position as leaders of Gehenna. You probably don’t know this, but when on a school camp, the most effective way to teach a young person leadership skills is to spout nonsense at them for a day. Luckily, it wasn’t all about leadership, we also had our monthly abstinence speech. I saw images that day that would bring Lucifer himself to tears. The boys were lectured on how to be ‘real’ men. Apparently, all you need is to be strong and straight. We never found out what topic the girls got. I’m sure it was progressive. We also spent an awful hour talking about our vertical group. 

Despite the lack of, well, an enjoyable camp, my mind was occupied by something different—the full-blown return of my nausea. I felt terrible. I could barely eat, I was shaking all over the show, and sleeping was almost as hard as staying awake during the camp’s ninth sex education session. 

The camp had its moments; the morning we left was a highlight. But ultimately, what I came away with was that something in me was not right. Either that was what it felt like to be bored to death, or there was something else that made me nauseous. 

Bo and Stephanie. 

July 13, 2018. 

That was the day where everything changed. I am big on comedy. One of my favourite comedians who got me through my Gehenna years is a man by the name of Bo Burnham. Bo’s comedy is explosive. Instead of simply speaking into a microphone for an hour, Bo sings, dances, and acts. It is a real one-man show. On this July day, an interview of Bo’s found its way to my eyes, titled: Bo Burnham On Anxiety.

In this, Bo talks about his battle with anxiety. He says that he has struggled with it for longer than initially thought. That he went through school having stomach problems but never knew why. He even ended up in the hospital one day. The interviewer asks Bo what it was that hid the fact that it was anxiety causing the issues. 

“It was so constant I didn’t think it could have been.”

This clip hit me hard. It was a terrifying reality to face. If someone confident like Bo could suffer from this, could I? Could this really be the answer? Is it all from my brain? Was that a panic attack in Accounting? Does this explain why it was worse in the morning? Have I wasted all this time? Did I not need the ultrasound test?  

In late September, I had a day of testing at the hospital. I had been part of a long-term study comparing the development of premature babies, and patient babies. I was a patient baby. Once every few years, we were given many cognitive and physical tasks, they would feed us snacks, and at the end, we would get a nice gift. I still have my football pillow from 2009. This particular day in September was my last. I got to play with loads of cool hospital machines. My favourite was when they stuck weird pads all over me to test my stickiness.

As well as playing the Lab Rat for the day, I was gifted the opportunity to talk to a real-life psychologist lady. Her name was Stephanie. It started with general chit chat, you know, normal psychologist conversation. I told her about my earthquake situation and the adrenal fatigue that followed. Then, I took the opportunity to present this idea. It went along the lines of: “You see, I’ve had this stomach problem and I heard about this anxiety thing and I thought maybe it could be something like that but I’m not entirely sure because I’m not an expert so what do you think and my hands shake a lot.” 

Now it was the psychologist lady Stephanie’s turn to ask questions. Do you have trouble relaxing? Do you often find yourself tired? Do you have trouble sleeping? Do you have trouble sitting still? Do you worry lots? Are you ever worried about that? And does that worry you? 

Are you ever afraid that something terrible might happen? 

The psychologist lady Stephanie went on to give me a series of situations. I, James, had to respond to the situations based on the reaction I, James, would have, if I, James, were in that situation. How do you feel about starting a conversation with a member of the opposite sex? Answering questions in class? Going to school camps? Eating in front of others? Going to a party? Answering a stranger on the phone? I let out a small laugh when she got to this point. I nailed the test. The psychologist lady Stephanie confirmed this; it turns out I specialise in social anxiety, with a minor in general anxiety. 

The Jump. The Fall. 

To most of my friends, the move from high school to university was a big step. For me, it was the long jump. The problem was I haven’t improved in my long jumping skills since I was ten, and more importantly, I didn’t know where I was going to land.  

Last time I made a jump like this, I spent weeks at home on the couch. I did not want that to happen again. So before taking the jump, I had four or five sessions with another psychologist whose name was also likely something along the lines of Stephanie, but it wasn’t the psychologist lady Stephanie. It started with general chit chat, you know, normal psychologist conversation. I then presented Stephanie #2 with all of my stuff (I got really good at presenting it). 

My attitude towards these sessions was pretty simple. I want someone to fix me, to take away my fear, to cure the nausea, to still my hands, to strengthen my legs, to give me the answer that everyone else seems to have. However, I left these sessions feeling, quite frankly, ripped off. Because what I got was not an easy fix, what I got was something I did not know how to use. Stephanie left me with what I can only describe as a list of positive affirmations that she had gathered from our conversations. A list of things that I could do. 

I was told to believe in myself. That I had it in me to succeed at university. That I could do it. 

Great. 

I couldn’t believe what she gave me, and I entered university changing nothing in my mindset. It was a rough start. I belly-flopped, head first, into lectures. The atmospheric pressure was immense, even in the heights of the back corner. Tutorials were a hellscape, the uncomfortable silences of the group were drowned out by the absolute terror escaping from my body, as I painstakingly sat, praying I would not be called on. The most gruelling work I did came in the form of searching for a soulless space on campus, so I could eat my chips without being scorned. My heart became a beast of its own, desperately attempting to burst out of its cage. I would end the day a hot, sweaty mess, dreading the thought of going in tomorrow to do it all again. On the first day of semester two, I vomited outside the health centre. 

So what?

In its simplest form, social anxiety is the worry of what other people think of you. It is the feeling of being the centre of the world and desperately wishing you were anywhere else. It is a constant voice saying, ‘watch out, you’re in danger’. It is the uncontrollable fear of nothing in particular. 

Teenage culture is not in the best place today. 

They glorify these disgusting social media “influencers” who live “authentic” lives, and are totally “happy”. They try everything in their power to be like these people, destroying their personality until they are just an empty husk of nothingness. They accept friend requests from people they barely know, in some bizarre attempt to prove to other strangers that they know people. They send obsessively crafted messages to the people they like, frantically creating a fake caricature of themselves, in the hope they seem more likeable. They openly obsess over their newfound sweetheart, relentlessly bragging about how much they love their significant other, and how much they are loved, only for the person to change next week. They are overwhelmed, every day, by hundreds of social media posts with groups of people who barely know each other, proclaiming here we are, we are happy, we are living amazing lives, and you, you are missing out. 

A teenager who lives in this culture, and who battles with social anxiety, will, without question, feel like a failure. I should be out there finding happiness, but I can’t.

I am finally coming out of this age group.

At the beginning of the year, I went out to have an actual real-life dinner with my three best friends, Preetham, Andy, and Rue. We sat and laughed, and laughed, and ate, and laughed some more. We were like a synchronised swimming team, but without the water or dancing, just the beauty. After dinner, we cruised back to my house, had a kick around in the park, and relived the glory days of the Year Five football team. It was one of those stunning Christchurch nights, the warm north-westerly wind filled our lungs, and the sun frozen behind the mountains splashed a hypnotising pink across the clouds. It was at this moment when I began to understand what Stephane #2 was on about. Because at this moment, I was happy.   

I am okay. 

I have achieved big tasks. 

I have answered a question in a tutorial. 

I have walked alone through campus more than once.  

I have made it through a year and a half of university without dying. 

I have even made a couple of friends, and even if I hadn’t, I still have people close to me. 

I am okay, and I will be okay.  

These statements, to most people, would be trivial. To me, they are more than I could have ever imagined. The hardest moments can strike from the smallest of things. But I can, and will, get through these moments. 

Of course, I will have bad days. I will get nauseous. I will shake. I will stutter. I will sweat. I will not get on with everyone I meet. I will have trouble at the self-checkout, and I will need the kind old supermarket lady to come over and help, and I will have an awkward moment when I try to explain that the Watermelon Chupa Chup is too light for the scale, and she will say it’s okay, it happens all of the time, and in that moment I will want to die, but damn it, I will live to see another day. 

Like this essay, it took me quite a long time to find the point. To understand what exactly it was that made me feel the way I feel. I believe everyone struggles with it sometimes, finding the point. They might make excuses. Oh, I’m just introverted, it’s not social anxiety. Oh, I’m just tired, I’m not depressed. Oh, everyone else went through the same trauma, so I don’t need help. Oh, they are just dreams, I don’t need therapy. Oh, I don’t want to bother anyone. Oh, it happens to everyone. Oh, other people have it worse. 

No. 

We cannot live our lives in worry. We cannot live in fear of the next worst moment. There were times when I would catch myself in this worry. It would start with a small thought. “Oh, my parents are late home tonight.” The thought would then slowly grow a mind of its own, transforming into a creature that would take control of my being. It would thrust me into a sense of dread, forcing me to imagine the details of the deadly crash. Before I knew it, I was bracing myself for the horrible thought to become a reality, while attempting to clean the sieve. 

The only way to defeat the creature is to talk with someone. 

I hate to end on a cliché, but some clichés are important, and they must be repeated. To quote Bo, “Speaking it is the salvation”. You don’t win any rewards for the oh’s. You do win a reward for being honest with yourself. You have to talk to someone trustworthy, not your grogged mate, not your crush, and definitely not me. Talking is the first step toward healing.