Please Note: Before reading this letter. I want you to know I discuss my struggles with hypervigilance. If you feel like this content might be too much or triggering for you please know you are loved and you are not alone in what you are going through. I encourage you to read another of the amazing letters on IfYoureReadingThis.org or to prepare resources that you might find helpful.
If you’re reading this, you are not a burden.
You don’t know me, but I freak out when people hug me. I absolutely despise when people I don’t know pat me on my shoulder or brush behind me a touch too close. I even sometimes have trouble when the people I love hug me.
But the truth is, I love to be hugged. I just need someone to ask me first if it’s okay. It has to be on my terms and I have to be aware of what’s happening.
I haven’t always been this way.
I used to love running by myself. But now I talk to my therapist for an hour about it. I plan my route, I pick out my comfort music, and make sure the sun is bright and high in the sky. My therapist tells me that some people need a shock of cold to remind them to stay in the moment, to prevent them from panicking. So I run with a little ice cube in a plastic bag that melts as I run. Sometimes I don’t make it out the door.
Now when I walk into a room I need to know where the exit is. I scan the perimeter and stand so my back is to a wall or window, far from an open door or hallway. I need to feel safe in my surroundings. I need to know what is behind me.
I have this anxiety that I never used to have, and at first I fought it. I used to force myself to just go on with my life as it used to be. I couldn’t acknowledge what happened, and so I didn’t feel like I needed to set boundaries for myself. I would go out to social events and be so anxious about who was around me that by the end of the night I was exhausted. It was too scary to acknowledge my anxiety and too easy to just listen to someone else’s day. I would cry silently on the other side of the phone when I called the people I loved because I couldn’t put words to how I was feeling.
The pandemic was a good wake up call that I needed to change my life. I was alone in my apartment with all my fears and anxieties facing me head on in the mirror. When guidelines went into place, and people started to go out in public again, I reentered society slowly with everyone else. Masks on, 6 feet away, cautious.
Gradually, I began letting people into my life. I opened up about what I had been through. I told my friends what I needed but didn’t tell them the whole story, and they were still beyond supportive.
I realized that I don’t love my friends with anxiety or depression any less. So why would they love me any less? I love them for who they are. I don’t focus on the things they can’t do, I just support them as they try to do all the things they want to do. To me, their anxiety and depression are small aspects of who they are. Aspects that make them who they are, but aren’t all of who they are, not all consuming or personality dictating.
So, I began to open up to my friends more, and I started to find comfort in the small things. I grew up in Virginia, in a small rural town surrounded by mountains, and so I began to build mountains of support around me here in Boston. Some were very literal. With my friends, I painted a wall mural of mountains in my bedroom that I fall asleep to every night. I like to joke that it keeps all my nightmares out. Some were a touch more figurative. Now, at social events, I hold onto my friends’ arms and I panic a little less when a stranger bumps me because I feel surrounded by a mountainous chain of support that extends far beyond me.
I’ve experienced a lot of things that give me anxiety, and I know there’s not one single person on earth who will be able to relate to every single thing I have been through. But the reality is that while no one person will understand every experience I’ve been through, one of my friends will understand the pain I felt being dumped out of the blue. A classmate of mine will understand what it feels like to have a family member with a serious medical condition. Someone I talk to at school will know what it feels like to have this pressure to pretend I’m okay when I’m not. A patient I work with will understand why I go out of my way to make sure they are aware of exactly where I am standing and what I am doing before I do a physical exam. A colleague will understand the stress of moving away from your family and support system.
We’ll share this unspoken understanding and I’ll feel less alone in what I’m going through. That this anxiety is normal and a natural response to what I’ve been through.
I’ll know that my anxiety isn’t this huge burden. It’s just a small part of who I am. My anxiety doesn’t make me a burden to the people who love me. It’s not some “lesson” I can knit a silver lining out of, but it’s also not an anchor that will drag me down away from my support system.
Something really beautiful came from all of this, and while there are things I cannot make beautiful that linger and sting, I have learned to talk about them, paint them, and write of them. They are parts of me that deserve air and light even if they are not objectively beautiful or easily digestible.
Some of the things that happened to me did not make me stronger, braver, warmer or more empathetic. Some of the things that happened to me shut me off from the people I love and the people that care about me. They made me question myself, left me crying in the shower, made me give up things that I used to love. But I’m still here. Even if I’m a little bit different than I used to be, sharper in some areas, quieter in others.
I want to honor my grief for the time that I feel like I lost. I can mourn the person I would have been, without losing love for the person that I’ve become. I like to think of myself both as that person walking at the bottom of the ocean weighed down by all the water overhead, and as the bystander who saw someone drowning and dragged them back to the surface.
If only I could go back in time. I realize now the person I am today is the person that I needed all those times I cried on the phone, pretended to be fine and felt like I hit rock bottom. I wish I could go back a million times and hug my younger selves. Younger me would have felt loved, safe and very proud of the person I am today.
Where does the line stop blurring between the old me and the new me? How much is due to trauma? How much is due to coping? I don’t know. But I’m proud of who I am.
I know I’m not a burden, and neither are you.
Kendall J., BUSM ‘24
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