9 years ago, at the prime age of 18, as I was driving to college, a sense of impending doom dawned upon me. As if I’ve lost control of my car and crashed out of the Penang bridge and into the sea. I panicked. Nothing was wrong though, little did I know, that that was a panic attack. The first of many.

A year after, attacks are just, constant. 3, 4 times a week. Night terrors and mornings with mental breakdown. I was 19, with a blood pressure reading north of 150/90. “What the fuck was going on?”.

I looked around, the people around me, friends, co-workers, my parents and I thought to myself, “If this is a fact of life I don’t know how you people manage it, this can’t be normal”.

And it wasn’t.

After being referred to the hospital, and after a bunch of tests, the doctor said “Hey, i think think you have GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder).  There’s treatment, you’re gonna be on SSRI-s and we’ll prescribe Xanax for your everyday symptoms.”

I wish to say that, that fixed it but, no. I hated the drugs. It dulled everything, and all that was left was a low hum of sadness, anger and resentment. Eventually it turned to numbness. And when you’re numb and no longer feeling alive….

They say that when you hit rock bottom there’s no where else to go but up, however, there’s always that option of digging a hole six feet deep. And that’s what I did, one night, when I decided that I no longer wanted to be here.

It failed. Turns out swallowing 3 months worth of meds was not enough to kill me. It did give me the worse headache I’ve ever had in my life though. Stupid, and embarrassing.

Drove myself to the hospital after blacking out for a whole day, got held in the triage and they called my parents. Mum pulled me out of wherever I was living at, at time to go back and live with her and said, “I’ll help”.

Again, I wish to say that that was the wake-up call, that from then on, I tried my best to recover and fight back but no. The year after that was filled with more drug abuses and alcohol addiction that eventually led to me wrecking my car in a DUI incident.

Mom never cried when she heard the news, she just surrendered. And that. That was the wake-up call.

I quit the drugs, and the meds. The panic attacks came back more frequent and boy was it hard. But I already knew one thing at the time, that I didn’t know before, which is that, however bad things are, dying is worse.

That fear that I’ve felt the last few moments I was conscious during my attempt? Nothing has come close to it since. Not even the panic attacks. And that fear is what drives me to keep still and keep pushing through.

I found relieve through expressing the pain and the panic that I’ve felt on the inside, towards the weights at the gym, the miles on the roads, friendships and through the building of and contributions to the communities around me.

Yeah, some days it feels like all that I am doing is just running away from it. But even if that’s the case, it has brought me to where I am today. Alive, and well.

Now, am I fully healed from this disease? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’ll ever go away. But I think I have found my way of growing around it, and managing it the best that I can.

Sometimes, I forget, that I’m still alive for a reason. And that’s why I wanted to celebrate this years birthday, with a 27 hour run. As a reminder, to myself, that as hard as things are (and things have been hard quite recently), I’m still here for a reason.

Some days, the grieve and the anxiety still comes back, and I still do struggle with it from time to time but it’s much more rare now. And I’m also now in a position where I’m able to fall back on the routines, and the relationships that has kept me sane to this day.

Now, I’m taking the next step, which is sharing my story, and hopefully, being able to help someone else with it. 

If you’re one of the people currently struggling with depression, anxiety and/or any form of mental illness. Please hang on and please stick around. That hole is not worth digging and going in to. Trust me, it can get better and, if we fight hard enough, it will.

Thank you.