Life isn’t Fair by Katie Beeman

I flung my eyes open, feeling like I was in an endless spiral of worry. I was having an anxiety attack, and I knew it. I’ve had an anxiety disorder ever since I can remember. Most people have had some anxiety before, whether it be about an exam or a presentation, but it’s typically not to the extent that mine’s at. An anxiety attack can come at any minute, without any warning whatsoever. An attack is the scariest thing you’ll ever feel in your life. It’s like when your heart drops for a second when you miss a step on the stairs, but that feeling can last for hours at a time. It’s when you’re at the top of a roller coaster, terrified to go down, but that feeling can come and make a surprise entrance at any time or place for no reason at all.

My anxiety is typically about irrational things, what if I can’t sleep, what if I can’t eat breakfast, things like that. The things in your head really don’t make sense when you say them out loud, which makes the whole episode feel so frivolous after it has passed. I had had some pretty bad anxiety attacks during middle school, but they seemed to disappear when I started high school. Now I was about to go into my sophomore year, and life seemed to be going great. I was at band camp, and this year it was hosted at Bethel Park Retreat, located right next to Lake Michigan in southwestern Michigan. Band camp was something that I loved and one of the places that I felt most at home. I’d thought that a day full of practices would’ve worn me out enough to sleep, but I guess I was wrong.

It was the second night of camp, and I slept with a bit of trouble the first night, but nothing I couldn’t handle. For some reason, night was always the time my anxiety would flare up. I don’t know if I’d exactly call it insomnia, it was a lot worse than that. It always starts out with me worrying about whether or not I’ll be able to fall asleep, and then my anxiety takes over and throws me into a pit of misery. My anxiety usually gets triggered when I have even the slightest bit of trouble falling asleep, and that seemed to be the cause of it now. I start to question everything, and it may sound ridiculous when I say the “what ifs” out loud, but in your head they seem all too real.
When I have anxiety attacks it will usually make me throw up, and I hoped that this wouldn’t be the case this time as I had three sleeping roomates around me whom I didn’t want to wake. As I frantically tried to calm my stomach down, my brain started pondering everything that could possibly go wrong if I didn’t go to sleep tonight. I’d be exhausted tomorrow, I’d do bad out on the field, and that would most likely lead to me getting yelled at by our band director, Mrs. Ignash. She always got a bit moody when she was stressed, and band camp was one of the most stressful weeks of the year. I was miserable lying here, I just wanted to go to sleep.

I tried to calm myself down, but, of course, that never works without some outside assistance. I turned over and looked at the clock. 3 A.M. Great, now I’d get at least three hours of sleep, nowhere near enough to fuel me through a 12-hour day of practice. I decided to call my mom, not caring about the fact that I would be waking her up in the middle of the night. I needed something, anything, to help me get to sleep. I stayed on the phone with her for about an hour, as her talking to me helped me forget the worries I’d been having. I talked to her about anything and everything. She told me how her day was, which was the same as any other typical day at home during the summer. She had fed the cat, went for a walk down the road, and bought some groceries. I noticed that some tears were getting onto my phone, and I was too exhausted to even care if they crusted up on the screen and rendered my phone unusable.

My mom’s been one of my closest friend throughout my life, she’s my rock. She helped me through so much, I don’t know if I’d be where I am today without her. She’s the main person I’ll always go to comfort, before I go to any of my friends about something I’ll go to her. She’s easily the most important person in my life right now. I started to drift off to the sound of her voice, but somehow the illusion of sleep still drifted just out of reach. I ignored the thought of no sleep and decided to leave the call with my mom. I felt that she had calmed me down enough that I could at least rest quietly, even if that meant going without sleep I would be able to rest my body and mind for a couple of hours. But the second I hung up, it all came flooding back. I felt like I was going to die, and I wasn’t even entirely sure why. I felt so hopeless for no reason at all. I needed to go home, I couldn’t sit here and stay like this all week. My brain kept spinning, the lack of sleep starting to eat away at it. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all, what I needed was some sleep. But, of course, the one thing I couldn’t do was get to sleep.

I unlocked my phone and stared at its soft glow, hoping that the light would do something to soothe me, but, of course, it did nothing. There were faint tear stains on the screen from when I had been on the phone with my mom. I wiped the screen off with my blanket as I began to scroll through my contact list, looking for my mom to call her back. As I was looking down at my hands I noticed they were shaking. It didn’t surprise me, that’s a normal response most people have to fear. Only my fear was in my head, and I was making it all up.

My heart was racing, and the “what ifs” started to come with more intensity. What if I couldn’t calm myself down? What if I had stressed myself up so badly that the shakiness I was experiencing now lead to permanent nerve damage? It all seems silly when I look back on it, but it wasn’t to me then. It felt too real thinking those thoughts in my head. I made it sound so realistic to myself that it felt like someone else was there with me, confirming my worst fears and locking me in a prison of eternal suffering. I tried to focus back in on my phone, where I looked frantically to find my mom’s name in my contact list. I quickly tapped it with one shaky hand and waited for her to pick up, desperate for something to reassure me. I was bawling as it rang, but I wasn’t able to control myself anymore.
“Mom,” I sobbed into the phone, “please come get me, I can’t do this anymore.”
“Katie,” she whispered calmly, “you need to calm down.”
“I know I do, but I just can’t, it’s too hard for me.”
“Well,” she replied, thinking, “you can either calm down and go to sleep, or I can get an adult to come and sit with you. I can’t come pick you up, that’s just not an option.”
“Call someone,” I cried, “anyone, I need something to make this feeling go away.” She ended the call for a bit to call an adult that was staying in the building with us, but the second she was done she called me right back.
“Stay on the phone with me, ok?” my mom told me in a soothing voice.
“Ok,” I replied shakily, still in an inner turmoil with myself.
I was grateful for another few minutes of her calming voice. She was able to soothe me a bit, but I had worked myself up so much that it was a lot harder to come back down to sanity. I heard a faint knock at my door, and realized that the adult she contacted must have reached my room. I felt the relief of having something to comfort me wash over me like a giant wave. I hung up on the call with my mom and tossed my phone to the side, once again not caring if I damaged it in the process. The only thing in the world I cared about at this point was getting some sleep.

The adult opened the door and turned on the overhead light, making me squint against its brightness. They ruffled through a plastic bag and unscrewed the lid to an orange pill bottle. She handed me some valium that I have a prescription for, for when my anxiety comes in severe cases like this one. I grabbed my water bottle sitting on the nightstand next to me, wanting to wash this pill down and enjoy its calming effects as soon as possible. The adult was the mom of another student at camp, and I didn’t know her at all. I gratefully accepted her willingness to sit with me until I fell asleep. I didn’t care if we were strangers, I needed someone to turn to in this time of need. I laid down as I waited for the medicine to kick in, and for the first time that night I felt that everything was going to be okay. I closed my eyes as the adult rubbed my back soothingly, and before I knew it, I had begun to fall into an effortless sleep.

My anxiety isn’t fair, but I’ve learned to accept it. It’s like something my mom will always tell me, life isn’t fair. But things aren’t fair for a reason. Life would be so bland and boring if everything came easily to you. Injustices help add a little bit of spice to your life, even if you may not necessary like them. Your life would be so mundane without anything pushing you to be a better person. You can either sit behind and accept the fact that things aren’t fair, or you can take it as a challenge, like I did. I struggled deeply with my anxiety for a while, but once I overcame it I was able to see why I was faced with this task. Things can be unfair so you can learn from them, and be able to grow into a better person. I was able to overcome my anxiety, and sure it might not have happened right way or as fast as I’d like, but I still did it. It’s one of my best accomplishments in life so far, being able to get rid of such a huge chunk of that plague that’s haunted me as long as I can remember. I was able to win the battle inside of my head. You can win the battle of whatever injustice you’re facing as well, you just have to go out and face it.