Getting Diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety

There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. —Seneca

For the first twenty years or so of my time on Earth, I tried to live a normal life. I had friends I went on night outs with. We’d go on trips to the neighboring islands. We went hiking, swimming, and wakeboarding. We had Christmas parties and celebrated everyone’s birthday. We would fall in love here and there, and we were always ready to book the biggest karaoke room in the city to tend to whoever was suffering from a broken heart.

I laughed like normal people do. I cried as anyone else did. I laughed and cried until it became apparent to me that it was harder for me to be happy about things that normal people would be happy about. I would sometimes listen to people about their sadness but I felt like this sadness came to me more often than it did to them.

I was starting to feel like I was living the wrong way. Perhaps I was reading the wrong books or watching the wrong shows. Perhaps I listened to Morrissey or Radiohead way too much. Whatever it was, I knew there was something wrong with me that I didn’t want people to know about.

Getting misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder

It was not until in my mid-twenties that I realized I needed someone to fix me. I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was not prescribed any medication but was told to go for a run every day. So I did.

Every afternoon after work, I laced up my running shoes and went for a run along the river. But my sadness never went away.

I stopped running and went on to live my life still carrying a kind of burden I never understood.

I found that smoking pot temporarily made me feel a little lighter so I clung to that for a while. I found that having a drink or two made me feel more at ease around people. I felt okay for years. Or so I thought.

The funny thing about these substances is that you will never get enough. Your tolerance builds up until no amount of alcohol can make you feel at ease anymore, no amount of pot can make you feel light. Alcohol just made me feel sadder. Pot made me feel lethargic and dejected. The combination of the two made me feel sorry for myself. So I decided it was time to stop. So I did.

Being sober meant I was now raw dogging whatever it was I was suffering from. I would wake up in the morning with my heart beating out of my chest. I was always terrified to go to work. I constantly had headaches that I had to have ibuprofen in every pocket of my jacket, every drawer in my house, and every purse I routinely used.

I’ve had panic attacks at train stations, in public bathrooms, inside my house, on buses and trains, in our office, at the park, inside a restaurant. I randomly shed a tear in front of my students and colleagues because there was no containing my sadness anymore.

Getting medicated

On the 27th of October 2022, I couldn’t take it any longer and asked a dear friend to help me find a mental clinic or institution that would take in walk-in patients. We were at a park in Ueno and we found one nearby.

They ran several blood tests and diagnostic tests and a week later, I was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety.

They put me on antidepressants and I was also prescribed benzodiazepines. I almost cried from relief after I took my first pill of benzos.

Suddenly, the thoughts in my head were not racing anymore. I was not worried about whether I was taking too much space on the train. I was not worried whether I was in the bathroom cubicle for too long. I felt light to my feet and I was not worried about one single thing.

For the first time in my life, I felt like my brain and body were in sync. If I told my brain to walk slowly, my body would respond accordingly. If I thought about sitting down, I would just sit down without spending the next five minutes wondering if the other person who was standing next to me would have needed my seat more. If I wanted to write something, I didn’t have to write as fast as I could just to keep up with my thoughts.

I remember thinking to myself, So this is how normal people feel on a day-to-day basis? No chest tightness? No trembling or shaking? No shortness of breath? No feelings of distress for no reason at all? No feeling of being constantly being pulled underwater? Really?

On the 9th of December 2022, I wrote in my journal:

I haven’t been writing because I haven’t been feeling any sort of emotion. I feel sort of emotionally stable and to be honest, I’m not quite sure I’ll ever get used to it. I have been on Trintellix for about a month now. I feel okay most days. And when I say most days, that’s 90% of the time. I don’t know why I delayed getting on antidepressants. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Suddenly, I’m able to operate normally. I’m even calmer in terms of dealing with negative people.

After a year of Trintellix, my doctor and I decided I didn’t need it anymore. On really bad days, I still seek the aid of my good old anti-anxiety pills—benzos. I would not go as far as saying I am happy but I can say that I am in a much better headspace than I was two years ago.

I still feel like an anomaly, that I was plopped into this world by mistake with an irreversible flaw that the gods accidentally made. But for whatever reason, after everything I went through that I thought I’d die from, I am still here.

Still here.