What's it like to feel alone? HD

Sometimes, even the people who appear to be the most together will be dealing with more than you can imagine. Not everyone is vocal enough to cry for help, to demand support, to seek sympathy. A lot of us internalize things. We can portray an idealistic life and make it look like “we have it all” from the outside, or even something close to it. But, that often isn’t the case. Life is hard. It’s unforgiving and it doesn’t wait for you to catch up before it continues on. I am SO blessed to have my family and my horses and so many people that I love but even with that, my anxiety causes me to spend so much time worrying about the mess I would be if I were to suddenly lose any one of these things. I’m constantly worrying about death. About disaster. About these few things that help keep my sanity intact suddenly disappearing. And it’s weary. I don’t often sleep straight through the night unless it’s a night I spend beside my boyfriend, who calms my anxiety. I wake up with a knot in my stomach from an unknown fear. I toss and turn, obsessed with the thought that I forgot to set an alarm even know I know I did. It haunts me like a ghost, always there even when it doesn’t seem like it. Sometimes, when I’m driving home, I start panicking. I imagine a car colliding into mine when I take a turn and absolutely decimating me and my car. These aren’t normal thoughts, they’re all a result of an anxiety disorder. Something that’s a part of me, something that I can’t ever fully escape and it is exhausting. And, then there are the real fears. The perfectly viable ones. When I pull into the driveway of my home, sometimes I’m absolutely frozen in place with the terrifying thought that today would be the day that my family member, who struggles with addiction, had overdosed. That I would be the one who would find them. The one who would make the call. A lot of people don’t really understand these things. At least, not normal people. Not ones who haven’t directly dealt with it. When they see an addict or a mentally ill person, they see damaged goods. Someone who brought it upon themselves. They don’t see them as a person with a disease. A person with a story that led them to being the way that they are now. And it’s really sad. People write off these people as societal outcasts. It’s devastating. Walking through the downtown eastside of Vancouver was a wakeup call for me. So many people that we all, in some way, have let down. People need to be more aware and more willing to help these people. Addiction IS included in mental health awareness. So, now, I guess, I’m trying to speak out. They don’t want their lives to fall apart the way they can if they succumb to the demons that are addictive behaviours or anxiety or depression disorders that lead people to refraining from doing day to day activities that they otherwise would love to do. None of these thoughts ever make it to my videos. None of these realities touch my videos to the full extent that they touch m