So I’ve been trying to figure out for the last couple of months exactly what it is I love about these writers I’ve discovered through Dooce and I’ve finally JUST figured it out: their brains are as f’d up as mine. I know what you’re thinking – that’s all fine and good that you share the same sense of humor. This is partly true.

What is totally true is that these writers I love, who have blogs I love, who write for magazines and newspapers and other publications I love, have suffered from some form or another of anxiety or depression.

And now I’m going to put it out there for the world to read.

I have panic disorder. Otherwise known as a lot of anxiety. And it controls my life 85% of the time. The other 15% is when I am consciously deciding to take my medication regularly and rejoin society. But 85% of my life is consumed by this disease – and it is a disease. A big fat horrible one.

It runs in my family, though our Southern upbringing doesn’t allow us to talk about it or admit that we have it, or share our misery with each other even though it might make us feel better. My very first panic attack was the night before Junior Banquet at Sweet Briar in 1999. I was sitting in a friend’s dorm room and suddenly I was overwhelmed with the sense that I would die immediately from suffocation, but I didn’t know why. Two friends that were with me offered to call campus security, because they thought that maybe a campus cop would know how to handle my “nervous breakdown” more than they would.

I went to the infirmary. I met with a nurse. She told me to “seek counseling” from a horrible counselor named Anne, who I’m pretty sure told me she was a psychologist but who actually wasn’t. I met with her twice. The first time, she asked me to describe a panic attack in detail. I told her that I felt like I would die. She said she didn’t understand. The second time I met with her, she gave me some reading materials and told me to work on things by myself for a while and get back with her if I didn’t feel better.

I called my mother. I told her that I had panic attacks, just like that HBO special on Kim Basinger, which had just come out at the time. She, and lots of other people, told me that I was just stressed out and I believe she thought that would help me. But it didn’t. You can’t fix this with a hug and a phone call and reassurances, but everyone I knew then did the best they could. In those days, no one that had panic attacks talked about their anxiety – at least no one I knew of. Verbose me tried to tell everyone I came in contact with. “I have this, please listen to me, help me make it better.” I didn’t want to drive my Oldsmobile into a tree on highway 29 in Amherst, VA - but then again, I wanted to. I suffered from depression my freshman year in college, though I didn’t know it at the time. I smoked cartons of cigarettes every few days, I never got out of bed, I skipped every class I could, and I hated my roommates with a major passion (the only real emotion I had the entire year).

My anxiety took a nap for a few years. And then it resurfaced again in 2003. I was at a friend’s wedding in Atlanta. I felt trapped and afraid and knew that I would faint in the church pew just as they were lighting their god-awful unity candle. And then Brian proposed. And then my mother and I planned a wedding for 400 people. And then my co-worker felt funny chest pains every 5 minutes, which meant that I in turn felt those funny chest pains, too. And then my father-in-law died from cancer. And then my husband started drinking a lot. I avoided grocery stores, Wal-Mart, the mall, parties. I stayed away from any situation that I felt I couldn’t get out of if I needed to. I flew to San Diego and barely managed to get through a half hour without a panic attack.

And then I went to the doctor.

He put me on Zoloft and Xanax and when I took it regularly, it made me feel normal again. So I took it, felt better, and realized that maybe I didn’t need it anymore. I weaned myself off of it and then I began my master’s degree. And I agreed to teach a class part-time. And I chaired a commitee at my job that required a lot of work. And I did my regular job. And I tried to keep my marriage intact and afloat. But it didn’t work.

So I went back to the doctor again last year and told him that I needed to get back on my medication that once made me feel so much better. But then it didn’t make me feel the same and so here I am now. I deal with anxiety every day. I fear it, I loathe the control it has over me, and occasionally I wish it on my worst enemies so that they will know what it’s like to be me.

I have no clout. I am not a famous writer, I have never been published (except for the one year when I was a newspaper reporter) and I can’t claim to have writer friends that will guest-post for me when I’m on vacation. But what I do have is a disease that requires me to second-guess everything I do, every choice I make, so that I can avoid the inevitable anxiety that will come along with it.

I also have this blog. And it’s cathartic to me to write it. If not one other person in the world reads this and empathizes with me and this very chic purse of anxiety that I carry, then I’m okay. Because there are others out there just like me. And they know what I’m talking about and they give me hope, every day, that my life does mean something after all.