Choking On It

A glimpse into a life with anxiety

Mental Illness; the more I consider its many forms, the more I discover new ways in which it has touched my life. Almost my entire immediate family has been on medication at some point in life. 

My earliest struggles with anxiety manifested themselves in the form of an eating disorder when I was in grade six. I had just taken a babysitting first aid course, in which we were shown videos of various staged emergency situations. I still remember the look on the actor’s face as she pretended to choke. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it, but I soon found out that my brain had filed the memory away in striking detail. Not too long afterward, while eating with my family at McDonalds, I took an overlarge bite of my Quarter Pounder with cheese. The meat lodged itself in my throat for what was likely only a millisecond, but my brain registered panic, and that moment in time seemed to last for an eternity. After this experience, I refused to eat solid foods for about a year. Instead, I drank Ensure, which was lovingly termed “mud” by a friend at school, at meal times. Anything that contained “chunks” was thrown into the blender to be completely liquefied. On one occasion, I downed an entire glass of gravy and remember thinking how much I missed eating real food. 

I don’t generally like to refer to this experience as an eating disorder, because it wasn’t anything like anorexia or bulimia. I wasn’t worried about my weight; in fact, I was embarrassed about how skinny I was (I never wanted to wear short sleeves at school). I craved food all the time but was paralyzed at the thought of what might happen if I ate something solid. Everything became magnified in my mind; choking was almost a certainty. I remember trying to picture my life at thirty and I assumed I would still be living off of Ensure. 

There was a lot going on internally during my year off solids. I have stark memories of lying alone at night and thinking about hell. My most common thought was “If predestination is real, what if God plans for me to turn away from him?” I constantly worried that my conversion was not genuine. What if I truly didn’t “believe in my heart”? I clearly remember on one occasion feeling as if I were surrounded by shadowy creatures, preying on my fear and loneliness. Sometimes I think that demons are the product of mental illness. 

I tried Prozac for a while. I even went to one counselling session in which I was asked to draw a picture and the shrink proceeded to analyze everything I drew. I hated it. My parents copied out the Message version of Philippians 4 and suggested I memorize it. Sometimes, I said the words over and over again alone at night. One day, I told my mom that I thought I would get better. “I feel it in my bones,” I said to her. Little by little, I began to incorporate more solids into my diet, mixing them with juice or water and swishing everything together in my mouth. My glass of water or juice was a safety blanket for a while. And then it wasn’t. I like to think this whole event in my life is the reason for my love of food today. However; my internal battle with anxiety didn’t end there. I still take medication for it, and I think I always will. 

My life has brought me into contact with many others who share similar struggles. In high school my friend Annie came to live with us. Her mom had some insanely messed up ideas about how to treat a human being that absolutely scream mental illness to me. In university, I lost a friend to suicide. She was a beautiful, vibrant girl that I will never ever forget. 

Most recently, my mother had stints put in her heart. She has never had issues with her weight, has always eaten healthily, gotten a good amount of exercise and has no history of heart problems in her family. The most likely cause of her 90% blockage? The same ugly demon that has been chasing me all my life; anxiety. Today, my relationship with my mom is the source of my deepest pain. One would think our shared struggles would serve to bring us closer together, but because we have both chosen to accept and deal with our anxiety in such different ways, I feel that this problem has often driven a wedge between us. I am constantly wishing my mom would find more confidence in herself; that she would stop relying on me and others so much to fulfill her needs. Of course, this also happens to be one of my go-to coping mechanisms. 

And then there is the whole God thing. Those dark voices from my childhood that told me I had been forsaken by God have gotten quieter, I think because I no longer believe in the God of my childhood. Sometimes I get the feeling my mother does and that really scares me. I really truly feel that the shift in how I see God has given me freedom the likes of which I would have never imagined possible. I am no longer afraid of being sent to hell. Honestly, I don’t know how I could have gone on much longer with the old mindset. It frustrates me because I feel like my mom is still a slave to a God that is constantly chastising her. Worse still, she seems to want to be chastised. One time we were on a hike and she used the word “submissive” to a passing stranger to reference her deference to a decision my dad made about which path to take. I tried to explain to her that most people outside of the Christian faith don’t use that term unless they are BDSM. 

My biggest fear is that I will not have the relationship I long for with my mom before she is gone.
My second biggest fear is that I will have a daughter who feels about me the way that I feel about my mom.