BY ELLEN MENY
The day I cried over a teakettle was the day I decided to go on medication.
It feels like I’ve always had anxiety. It’s part of me like a second soul, so intertwined in my life it’s almost part of my personality. I say almost because until I went on medication, I did think it was my personality. We were one in the same, connected by a web of thoughts and fears.
Anxiety is Ellen Meny, and Ellen Meny is anxiety.
The obsessive thoughts and inability to relax were as a part of me as my sense of humor and need for control. I’ve lived with it since high school, when I was first kept awake believing a plane would crash into my house and kill my entire family. When you live with something for that long, you get used to those nasty feelings in your head. They become another part of what makes you, you.
But it took a teakettle to change my mind.
One night, overwhelmed by work and frazzled by the bright lights of my kitchen, the sounds of the television — the scream of a teakettle took me over the edge. I broke down in front of the stove, skin crawling and chest tight. And I decided, through tears, that I would give medication a try.
It took me three months until I found the courage to take the first pill. And from there, it was like meeting myself for the first time. Intrusive thoughts drifted in and out of my mind; they didn’t stick around and dig in as usual. Parts of myself I thought were personality flaws — my need for control, my impatience, my short attention span — dampened, growing quiet like music from a car driving further and further away. Gradually, my personality shined through my anxiety.
I have one particularly vivid memory. I was walking to get some coffee from a neighborhood cafe when I briefly thought that I had forgotten my wallet. But as I checked my purse to make sure it was there — it was — my mind didn’t drift to that familiar panic. My stomach didn’t flip at the what if of the situation.
And at that moment, it was like a light clicking on. I realized for the first time that my anxiety and I are separate. For the first time, I realized that all of those things I hated about myself, all of those nightmarish thoughts, weren’t ingrained in me. There was a way to untangle myself from them.
My psychiatrist instructed me to take the medication for a year and then taper off. My medication experience wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There were the side effects, the switching dosages, and the “wait, did I take my dose already?” questions. But, for me, being on medication felt like meeting the real me. A me that was scrubbed clean from something that had plagued me for most of my life.
Now that a year has passed and I’m tapering off my medication, it’s like I’m getting to know this other version of myself again — this raw version who trembles at the idea of a forgotten wallet or can’t handle being inside of a grocery store for too long. But now I return to myself with a new clarity that the medication provides. I sit with the feelings, trying to be gentle with this side of me. I know that while this is me, this isn’t all of me.
It’s my anxiety, and I am not my anxiety. We’re separate entities that are entwined, but with therapy and medication I can unstick myself from it. It’s such a relief to know that.
Ellen Meny is not anxiety, and anxiety is not Ellen Meny. I am so much more than that.
Ellen Meny is an Emmy-winning author, content creator and public speaker. Originally from Baltimore, Maryland; she currently works as a television reporter. From a young age, Ellen hoped to use her writing and public speaking skills to advocate for, educate and encourage those living with mental health conditions – and now she does just that. Ellen also finds the process of writing about herself in 3rd person very strange. You can connect with her at www.ellenmeny.com or on Instagram at @ellenmeny.