Hello there, my name is Kali.

Not really sure where to begin, I'm erm really tall, kind of awkward, my favorite movie is The Nightmare Before Christmas, I like pretty much anything made by Tim Burton, I play World of Warcraft xD,and I go to school. But enough about me, I'm here because I'm the only person I know that has anxiety. And I'm sure most of you konw how hard it is trying to explain to others about it, when you know that they don't truely understand, because they're not dealing with it. I'm tired of feeling alone and I want to talk to people that can relate to what I'm going through. I know I'm still a teenager, and pretty much every teenager is like "nobody understands me" but it really does suck when people really don't understand. Especially my mom, it really does hurt because I feel like when I have panic attacks, or when I get anxious over the little things, it really feels like sometimes she thinks it's silly, and because it doesn't bother her, then it shouldn't bother me.

I'll start with where my anxiety came from. Before I was born, my father was a struggling alcoholic. He also suffered from depression and anxiety brought on from the constant mental abuse from his father. He couldn't hold a job and he could never stay on his depression medication. When I was 12, we had to move from an apartment into my Grandmother's house. We weren't suppose to have animals in the apartment and we had a cat for about a year before the landlord found out and kicked us out, we didn't have enough money for a house, and we couldn't find another apartment quick enough so we had to move in with my dad's mother and father. A couple months after we had been living there, things were going ok. It was almost the end of summer and my parents took me to the airport because I was flying to Las Vegas to spend 2 weeks with my sister. My mom stayed with me in the terminal for quite awhile since my flight was delayed, and my father went to the local bar where his friend is a bartender, and drank. I got on the plane, and made it to my sister safey and my mother and father went back home. The next morning, my sister woke me up to tell me that my father had comitted suicide. I handled it pretty well I guess, my father wasn't really as close to me as most peoples. I mean we did have our moments but people were surprised when they saw me and i wasn't completely devistated.

Two years went by, it was my freshmen year of highschool, I was 14. My brother checked himself into rehab for a cocaine addiction. No one had really known he was struggling so much, he kept to himself. He was 24, lived on his own, and did well with his job for the most part.A few months went by and he seemed to be fine, but my mom had been visiting with him alot on the down low, because apparently he was struggling alot. My bother didn't really have long term relationships, so he'd never fallen in love with a girl. But sadly, he fell in love with one in rehab….and to no ones surprise but his, she chose drugs over him. He was absolutely crushed. And my brother was already an impulsive person, but he had been in a severe car accident a couple years earlier, and it damaged the part of his brain that controls impulses. So, one day he just lost it, and shot himself. This is really when my anxiety started, my 3 aunts on my fathers side all live by me (still living with mom and grandparents), and they all are self richeous pigs. I was sad about my brother, but I was coping with friends and trying to remember the happy times with my brother instead of the sad. They were all in therapy, and it angered them that I wasn't too. They thought I was absolutely mental because I wasn't literally bawling my eyes out at the sound of my brothers name like a "normal" person would be. They were constantly trying to get me into therapy, and they took advantage of my mothers weakened state of mind and got her to believe what they were saying(which in reality she hates them). It even got to the point where one of my aunts and my mother were trying to physically throw me into their car to take me to therapy. I didn't want to go, I wasn't having any problems. My grades didn't drop, I didn't stop hanging out with my friends, I didn't stop going to drama club, I was handling it my own way by surrounding myself with people that could help. But my aunts didn't believe that was possible. 

All that really started to trigger my anxiety. Now I was never really fat, just a little overwieght but when it really started to hit, I was getting so nervous that I was getting sick almost all the time. And I also have an extreme fear of throwing up, whether it be myself or being there when someone throws up. I go into extreme panic attacks and it's just not fun. Since I was getting sick all the time, I became afriad of eating. Also the fact that my grandma saves every crap of food that she comes across and then forgets about it didn't help. A good 1/3 of the food is spoiled, which scared me even more. I dropped alot of weight, really fast. I went from around 150 to 119 in around 6 months (my height is 5'10"so 199 is exetremely skinny). My doctor tried to wave it off as anorexia, which really angered me, but then I went to a pediatrician that worked with both the body and mind, and he dianosed me with anxiety.He perscribed me with Paxil and I started going to therapy. Therapy was nice, but I didn't really feel like I was sloving the main problem, and it eventually became a burden getting myself out there so I stopped going, which didn't effect me at all.A year later during my second semester of sophmore year, I started getting really sick. I ened up missing about a month and a half of school and we couldn't figre out why. I realized i was getting the full bown side effects from the Paxil, everything that could go wrong from that medicine was. We couldn't get an immediate appointment with my specialist so we had to wait a month and a half which is why i missed so much school. I just took myself off the Paxil immediatly and I didn't get any withdrawl, but without my medicine I was getting the full blown anxiety. I couldn't go to school because I was scared of everything and of course, fear led to anger. I was just a total mess. Finally, I was able to go to the doctor, and he perscribed me Lexapro, which worked very well.

The summer between soph and juinor year, I stopped taking the Lexapro. I just kept waking up late and stopped taking it. I was fine because I wasn't under as much stress as I am during school, so everything seemed ok. Then I started juinor year and I started to get sick again, to no surprise my doctor said i had to get back on the medicine and that i should stay on it, even during the summer. So I tried to take it but I got sick. I know I got sick because I was nervous that the meds would make me sick, but my mind still blamed it on the meds, so I was too afriad to take them. Now since i', so stressed everyday, I'm almost constantly sick, and recently It's getting hard for me to even leave my house. I'm dropping weight again because i'm afriad to eat, I think I'm down to 125 now, which im upset about because I was at 135, which is where I should be at. I'm tired of being sick everyday of my life, it's no way to live. But I am taking steps in the right direction, today I went to visit a friend that had moved in from New York. Although in the begining I wanted to go home, and I thought I was going to have a panic attack in the car, after a half hour I got comfortable and was able to relax and have fun. I was so happy that I was able to accomplish this, that I built up the courage to take my medicine. Although I am stressing on and off and getting a lil sick, I'll hopefully be ok and continue taking it.

~Kali