“The Curveball”

Whether I knew it or not, my experience with anxiety started at a young age. Shortly after my sister’s birth, my mother developed OCD. Hers in particular revolved around germaphobia. I grew up not understanding why I could not touch raw meat, why my mom wore gloves to clean clothes, and why whether or not I washed my hands mattered so much.

When I became older, my mom explained certain aspects of her OCD to me and my sister. Mom refused to let me grow up believing some of her compulsive habits were “normal.” As her OCD lessened, she allowed my sister and I to try things our own way. We could touch raw meat, crack eggs when we cooked, and eventually could live life our own way. Letting go of so much control remains difficult for my mom sometimes, but to this day, she manages to work through her anxiety.

Then came the curveball.

In 2007, at the tender age of seven, my younger sister Shannon developed OCD. Because of my mom, our family understood how to handle this, but only to a point. She was only seven years old. Shannon’s OCD revolved around losing control or something happening to a family member. A few years early, she witnessed her first death in our family when our aunt lost her battle to breast cancer. This presented itself, however, in her fear of storms. She obsessed over any bad weather and hid everything when storms came. At the time, I just entered the fifth grade and could not understand why my sister constantly panicked over storms.

This introduced me to therapy, anti-anxiety medications, and the stigma around both of them.The various details of my sister’s treatment remains her private information. I will say, however, that Shannon started therapy and took two medications for many years. Two facts some of her elementary school teachers choose to ignore. I, innocent little Kayley, could not understand why people thought her sister faked her anxiety disorder. To me, this shows how far the stigma against anxiety disorders goes. Some people cannot even believe a young child.

While I was exposed to anxiety young, I only developed it two years ago. At the beginning of junior year, I became overwhelmed by college prospects , the loss of former friends, marching band, my first ever AP classes, and the start of my newspaper career. At first, I labeled this as meer stress. Junior year is supposed to seem overwhelming and stressful right?

One night while trying to complete my AP Lang homework, I looked down at my work and started sobbing. This went on for three hours. Every so often, I would calm down for five minutes before slowly sinking back into panic. Following this incident, I suddenly could not function properly in public. I became anxious when order food or purchasing items at stores. I could barely speak up in class without crying. Determining I had social anxiety would take awhile, but I eventually learned to cope with it.

Senior year rolled around, and my anxiety remained mostly quiet. An occasional anxious moment came up, but it mostly remained quiet. Then Christmas Break came. One minute I am enjoying my holiday ,and the next, I’m experiencing  a panic attack everyday. Somehow, I became obsessed with the idea I could hurt someone.  I refused to leave the house and denied my problem until February.

My mom found me a therapist who I have seen for two months now. She helped me cope with these intrusive thoughts and suggested I see a psychiatrist.  About a month later, I saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with OCD, Panic Disorder, and depression. He prescribed an anti-anxiety medication called Lexapro. After two months on the medication, I see it making a difference in me. From here, I only need hope, like everyone else in this story, just to keep moving forward.