Mental Health: From the Pandemic Perspective
For as long as I can remember, I was always labeled by my peers as the quiet girl. The quiet girl staring down at her shoelaces as her teacher peered the room for a student to participate. Outside of the perspective, my peers held over me, I knew myself for being the girl whose hands were drenched in sweat. The girl whose stomach won the gold medal in gymnastics, doing perfect backflips and handstands in nerve-ridden situations. The girl whose nausea shook her to the very core and spoonfuls of cereal would not suffice.
These labels became me. Numerous parent-teacher conferences would be conducted with every teacher having the same comment: Why does Isabella refuse to participate? I was the last one chosen on debate teams due to my silence even though I had so much to say.
I always felt dysfunctional on the inside and outside. Mind running thousands of miles per hour for no apparent reason. Deep down, I knew these symptoms were not something to shrug off. I looked for responsibilities to surrender myself and keep me grounded. And for years, that worked, and any doubt over my mental stability disintegrated. Then a global pandemic tore down any shred of stability left.
It was the second week of March, and I went from working two jobs back to back and engaging in my senior year of high school to feeling trapped in the four walls of my room. Being told I was not allowed to return to work for God knows how long frightened me. I grew accustomed to structure and the security it gave me, and without it, I did not know what to do with myself. Mindlessly watching TV for hours on end turned me into a sluggish zombie, glued to the spring of my mattress and rolling around my blanket. It felt as if a step away from my bed would result in endless terror and get me contaminated. From early dawn, 5 am the rays of light peered from underneath the dusty blinds to the eerie settling of midnight blues, every day a broken record. The cracks of light illuminating the blue painted walls became all I knew apart from medical masks and surgical gloves. I was the main character in a black and white sitcom, the same setting, plot, and supporting characters on a loop with a lack of spontaneity. Freedom was on the horizon and hardly attainable.
The lack of structure began to affect me internally about a week in. It was 3 am on a Sunday night, coddled in a square inch of my bed, shivering for no apparent reason. My head flooded with incoherent thoughts incoming left and right. Crawling into a fetal position to incorporate some warmth in the middle of my body, even that was not enough. I felt burning coals rise in my abdomen to my esophagus, a rush of increasing heat far hotter than everything I have ever experienced. I leaped up from bed, a flight or fight instinct hurdling within my senses. It was 3 am so where exactly could I run to?
My fight instinct led me to my parents’ room, the maternal figures who could provide me some sort of relief from this overwhelming overload of senses. In that exact moment of looking for comfort, a strong feeling of dread trickled in. It was almost as if a brick was being dropped five stories high and to the bottom of my stomach, leaving only weak fragments floating around in my conscience. My mouth opened but with no coherency. I vividly remember hearing the blasphemous screams coming from me and my parents waking up with terror in their eyes. My flight instinct fought through and I reached my phone to dial 911 however to not avail. My mom grasped the phone and locked my arms together. It was at that moment where I passed out.
I woke up with the unsettling realization that I had an anxiety attack. I lay still in my parents’ bed wondering how I got here and retraced mental steps. My family surrounded me, asking me questions like “How do you feel?” and “Do you need anything?”. My limbs rested heavily, and my brain wired shut. I was mute for a long time. Professionals say in the morning your cortisol levels reach their highest point thus giving you the much-needed energy to fly from bed. In my case, however, those cortisol levels set off a chemical imbalance in my head. A chemical balance that killed any remainder of happiness I had left for months until treated properly.
That was one of the hundreds of anxiety attacks I would come to have daily. Some would give off a warning, others rejected a warning bell and came whenever they pleased. I would experience them at any time during the day, thus disrupting my studies and the overflowing responsibilities required to graduate. My quarantine consisted of multiple calls to the guidance counselor located at my school, a therapist I have had for over a decade, and a psychiatrist who took the patience to thoroughly comprehend my inner workings. I went from being the hardheaded, independent young woman who despised receiving help from anybody to feeling weak and small. There was no denying it, I felt like a butterfly whose wings were crushed by a large, overpowering boot, and yet I still cling onto life.
Hearing the words, you have generalized anxiety disorder and depression was somehow relieving. Here I was, hearing from professionals an explanation for all my problems. I could breathe more smoothly at night knowing there were reasons for these physical and psychological symptoms. I would talk with my psychiatrist and go into depth about the specifics of what it felt to wake up every day as Isabella Lopez. She listened with a caring ear, providing rational scientific to neurological explanations to either the tingling in between the index finger and ring finger or why my stomach churned like expired ice cream. In one of our abundance of conversations, I remember asking her why my chest would ache right before an anxiety attack. As most of my anxiety is centered around health, she described the power our minds held over our bodies. A simple yet concentrated thought about my arm hurting could easily replicate into the actual feeling of an arm in pain thus making it appear to be true.
From there, I grew interested in the inner workings of every being’s mind, from the origin of anxiety disorders to others such as borderline personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. There was so much intrigue surrounding where and why these thoughts come to life, where it all begins. I went from experiencing it, to wanting to learn more about it. I want to be more self-aware. I want to be more informed. I wanted to apply this new knowledge to help others who have lost hope. Helping others gives me hope. Being a psychiatrist would give me the proper purpose and meaning missing from my life.
By Isabella Lopez
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Maya Hilbert for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/