On February 2nd of last year my wife was on a plane to go and say her final goodbyes to her father, who had just been transferred to hospice. My eldest son was busy pushing through the last of his high school year so he could start college the following fall as an early admit student. My youngest was at his grandmas working on a project.
I was alone. Just me, my work, and a body covered in hives that had no cause.
Actually, that last part is a lie. The hives are a physical manifestation of my anxiety disorder. I had been in fight or flight mode for at least three days nonstop, and off and on for at least the previous two years. I was also in the midst of a depressive episode, but I didn't know it at the time. Please note, my depressive episode was situational, it was not the result of a depressive disorder.
Anxiety is odd on the spectrum of mental disorders. While all mental disorders seem to have a stigma attached in our society, anxiety is even stigmatized by many that have mental health issues. "Oh, you only have anxiety?" <followed by a long list of the speaker's mental issues> "you're so lucky not to have a real mental health problem. Try yoga or some breathing exercises!"
If only it was that easy. I need medication to manage my anxiety. It's not about chilling out or relaxing. There often isn't even a trigger for the anxiety. I'll be kicking back, reading a book, not a care in the world, and BAM! My heart starts pounding, my throat feels like it is closing up, my shoulders and chest start to hurt. If I can't get it under control, the hives begin to break out and I completely lose the ability to think clearly. Even worse, it can remain at this sustained rate for hours, or even days. The longest I personally had a panic episode last was 6 days, and then I ended up in the emergency room. (Coincidentally, this is also when I was diagnosed with anxiety when all other health tests came back showing there was nothing wrong with me. For the previous 30-odd years of my life I thought everyone had these episodes regularly and that they were normal.)
February 2nd looked like it would be another severe, unending episode. We were in deep money trouble, which I had only hinted at with my spouse. I'm normally very organized and responsible, but I hadn't been the last few months and I had been hiding it. A final notice had arrived from the bank, stating we had 10 days to contact them before foreclosure proceedings started. Why? I hadn't sent in a payment on the house in four months. In my ongoing state of anxiety and depression, I had got it into my head that the house was to blame for everything. If we lost it, we'd be forced to go somewhere better, somewhere away from my problems.
How it started
A little background is needed here. In 2010 my father and mother moved across country to live in our town. My mother quickly insinuated herself into our life, undermining us as parents because that is what she does. Fortunately, my dad could manage her and kept most damage to a minimum. My mother is controlling, paranoid, and passive aggressive. There is a reason I moved 500 miles away from my family as soon as I turned 18, and never willingly lived in the same state as them again.
In 2014 my father passed away. I was not given space to grieve or process my emotions. My mother decided it was my job to become her personal secretary and social committee, thus taking over the responsibilities that had been my father's. She also began a smear campaign on my wife, most likely in an effort to wedge us apart so she could secure me as her permanent servant. Another part of this was tearing me down, especially in front of other people, as another tool to weaken me so I wouldn't leave her.
The above sounds awful, and it was, but I need to clarify. My mother does these things, but they are subtle. I do not even think she realizes that she is doing them. They are not done out of malice. It is more like a child, trying to manipulate the adults around them to get what they crave or need. My mother suffered major trauma at a young age, and in many ways she has emotionally never grown beyond the age of six.
Regardless, I had a breakdown in 2015. Everything from the past year caught up to me and I ended up going through a six day panic episode. It culminated in a Starbucks, where I was trying desperately to relax with my spouse. My heart rate and blood pressure soared, my throat closed up, and I passed out. I was carted off in an ambulance to the hospital, where I was run through a battery of heart tests and blood tests. I was healthy as a horse and now that the attack was finally subsiding, I felt silly. That is, until the lovely ER doctor brought in a mental health professional who performed there own version of a battery of tests and informed me that the things I had felt my whole life, which had finally hit a peak, weren't normal, but that there was help.
This is help?
Help wasn't easy, though. The meds were better than nothing, but they didn't always work. I'd be great for months and then the anxiety would hit again. My brain didn't function right, my logic core would shut down. I was in a fog. Once it was determined that I didn't suffer anything beyond anxiety, the only treatment that was covered was my meds. By early 2017 I was falling apart but no one knew it. The death of my father had finally hit home, and I was angry with him for moving my mom here. I had finally realized he did it on purpose so I would become her mental caretaker, and IT WASN'T FUCKING FAIR. My dad, who I had always adored, had knowingly done this to me and I was angry with no one to take it out on. The rest of my life was laid out for me -- walk on eggshells, try to keep mom sane, withstand her criticism, lose myself, die.
No wonder why the idea of losing the house and running away seemed so enticing.
Fortunately, the foreclosure warning wasn't the only thing in the mail that day. There was also a flyer from the local college, advertising that registration began on April 3rd. I smiled, that's my birthday. I tossed both the foreclosure warning and the flyer in the recycling bin and went back to organizing the field guides in my office (an unnecessary task I was doing instead of work).
Hope
Later that night, unable to sleep and trying to distract myself from the anxiety, I went to the college website and began looking over programs. Then, I filled out the application. Hmm. The distraction was working. So I filled out a financial aid form. Weird, anxiety still not resurfacing. What's this? I need to take an entrance exam? Oh, look. I can schedule it on the website. Let's do it.
A week later my test day came up. I made excuses about running errands to my wife and headed down to the school, fully expecting to flunk. Then a funny thing happened -- I didn't flunk. I passed and was handed the piece of paper that said I could register. Well, there was still a chance for failure. I walked to the financial aid office. Aid packages hadn't been assigned yet, but the nice woman informed me that it looked like I would get a full aid package as long as no felonies or unpaid student loans popped up on my record. Weird.
Feeling strange, I walked over to the counseling department, waited 15 minutes for a walk-in appointment, then sat down with an advisor. When she asked me what I wanted to major in, I blurted out "biology" with no hesitation. Now this was
really weird. When I was a kid I wanted to be a scientist. An astronomer, geologist, ornithologist -- whatever subject had grabbed my imagination. But middle school had beat it into me most cruelly that I didn't have the brains for the math involved.
Why the hell did I say biology? Sure, I read field guides for fun, collected bits and bobs of nature on my hikes, and studied things that piqued my interest online. But biology is a science and I can't do science. My teachers, all those years ago, told me so. Yet, this advisor doesn't seem concerned as she is plugging in the classes I need. Huh, she just asked if she should press ok on the registration button. Why the hell not?
Afterward, I sat in the parking lot and called Wells Fargo. I pushed the button to be put through to the home preservation department. We discussed options.
Even weirder. There were options. We weren't going to lose the house. I then drove home, sat down with the wife, and told her everything.
More weird! She wasn't upset, not even about the house. She could give a fuck less about the house. She was ecstatic about school, though.
Beginnings
On my 40th birthday, I started as a college freshman. The few credits I had wracked up 20 years before had expired, so I was starting from scratch. My biology prof was known for being tough, yet I thrived in her class. I thrived in all my classes. I finished the quarter just shy of a 4.0. Oddly enough, I had felt almost no anxiety, even with the full schedule, the money issues, and the challenging classes.
I finished the quarter feeling strong and most importantly, AWAKE. I carried that energy into summer, were we had epic adventures as a family like I had always planned but never could pull off. I lost 25 lbs. I caught up all of our bills and we were almost not living paycheck to paycheck. I finally set boundaries with my mom and developed our exit plan. Don't get me wrong, there were still anxiety episodes, but they were brief and my meds worked as they should. I have no qualms that our choices, my choices, right now aren't "normal" for this stage in life, but that they are the right choices none the less.
This is the part that scares me, though. Mental illness almost tore down my -- our -- life once before. In retrospect I can see it was the anxiety, which masked the symptoms of the situational depression, that lead to the problems in the first place. Hell, the untreated anxiety probably had been negatively impacting my decisions since my first attempt at college decades ago.
But what's to stop it from happening again? Next time something big goes wrong, will I melt down like last February? Will I try, and possibly succeed, at throwing it all away? We are financially ahead for the first time in ages, and it scares the shit out of me. We have something tangible to lose. I could throw away every hope and dream, every goal, every chance at a life well lived because of the vagaries of my oh-so-human mind.
Fortunately, I am not writing this from a place of mental illness-induced anxiety. I am writing this from the fully lucid state of someone that is, for the time being at least, mentally "normal." I hope that this will be our saving grace -- I am recognizing the tendencies I have when I am mentally off kilter, so that we can have an action plan to quickly recognize and maintain until control is once again regained.
So for now, I am going to say no. Mental illness and financial security are not mutually exclusive, unless you let them be.
