“Now, this is the story all about how my life…” nah let me stop. It’s a story that might take a bit to get through, so I’m breaking it up into two parts. I’ll be talking about the one that plagues my life on a daily basis; anxiety. I’m going to fast forward a bit to 2016, when things started to get out of control.
Let’s begin.
I moved to Dublin in August 2016 in pursuit of a professional basketball career and a Master’s Degree and things were okay. I knew I could do better, but I was still getting adjusted and dealing with a lot of things outside of school and basketball. Christmas came and my family flew over from NY. That made me so happy because I’ve never spent a Christmas without them. It was a great time, but I wasn’t all the way there. My mind would not shut up and I couldn’t really enjoy myself as much as I wanted to.
After they left, I got even sadder. Now that I think about it, I was definitely depressed and anxious while they were there. Although I was around my family, I felt like I couldn’t really explain to them what was going on and I’ll tell you why. My parents come from the Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda, to be exact (shout-out to the 268, I love y’all). In my post, Men Cry Too, I explained that my dad would always tell me that ‘men don’t cry’ and how it’s affected me, even to this day.
However, it wasn’t just his words that affected me. It was my mom’s as well. See, it’s different for them and it took me a while to understand that. They could never talk about their mental health issues with their parents. You could say that it’s a bit of a taboo subject. Whenever I would broach the subject, I would be dismissed and be hit with the “that’s a part of life”. I couldn’t be mad at them for that, but it did make me sad. There’s a lot of trauma that they couldn’t deal with, but I love them so much for learning how to help me through my struggles. It was new territory for them, and once they understood that these feelings were real, they slowly opened up and listened to what I was saying.
Fast forward to February 2017, I decided that I was going to go to therapy. My anxiety was out of control. It’s a weird feeling because just like depression it can stop you from doing anything. Tasks that should take you minutes, can take you hours and at times, days or months to accomplish. You have this constant wave of fear and uneasiness over you because you feel like everything is out of your control. Talking to friends and family is exhausting because tears may burst out at any moment from you trying to keep it together. Sometimes, when you’re around people you’ll sit in silence and space out. You come to know agitation as your main emotion. Irritability comes in second place and you start snapping at people for no reason. You start avoiding social situations all together because you’ve developed these irrational fears about being embarrassed in front of people or wondering what they’re thinking about you every minute that you’re with them. I hated it.
Going to therapy wasn’t easy in the least bit. It was a daunting experience because I was opening up to this stranger. I learned so much about myself and still carry what I’ve learned with me. I think a lot of people aren’t comfortable going to therapy because they have their inner circle. You need to open yourself up to the possibility that you can talk to someone other than those that are close to you. It’s great to know that you have people in your corner that you can go to. Just remember they’re biased towards you and they’re not professionals. I’ve also heard the excuse “It doesn’t work for me”. Nah, it will, if you give it a chance.
I’m still dealing with anxiety on the daily, but I make sure that I do the work to keep myself in check. Taking care of your mental health issues and overall well being is a process, like everything else we do in life.
The 2017 story isn’t over in the slightest. I just wanted to give some background as to what prompted a lot of changes over these last few years. My next post will be a tough one, but I’m looking forward to sharing that with you all.
Thanks again for reading and growing with me. It’s greatly appreciated.
Happy Sunday.
Peace and blessings.
CB
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