Dramatic much? Obviously it is a bit of an exaggeration, but truthfully at times my life did feel like it was filled with despair. Now I’m not going to wax philosophically about how my problems are nothing compared to the larger issues plaguing humanity like famine, genocide and the boiling of our precious planet, but even considering all those issues, a panic attack can feel like an experience so dreadful that it might as well be life-threatening.
I talk about mental health on this blog from time to time. I used to do this more often than I do it now, mainly because my mental health used to be much less stable. I make no secret of the fact that I have been medicated for anxiety for over two years now, and this decision has done wonders for my mental health. I’ve not turned into a happy person overnight, but in weeks like the past few, I have noticed that the severe anxiety I used to experience has mellowed out to more of a general unease. Not to say that this feeling permeating my recent days has been pleasant, but I’ll take this over the dread I felt when I was younger.
When I was a teenager, fresh out of high school and tackling university for the first time, my life kind of collapsed. My parents’ marriage hadn’t been stable for a little while and although it would take a few more years before they divorced, the writing was on the wall even when I was seventeen. On top of that, my little brother – who is now living in Denmark and making more than me and I could not be more proud of him – was struggling with school a lot, and bringing worrying behavior home. This would also take a long time to eventually resolve. And adding to that, uni did not treat me well. I was beyond overwhelmed. There were so many strange people, unfamiliar places, new rules, chaos, and everything just collapsed. I recognized early on that something was wrong, but as teenagers do, I didn’t want to admit to it, and kept pretending I was fine. I was normal, right?
I wasn’t. Not by the standards of what society considered “normal” at least. My social skills were rough around the edges but in my late teens I managed to learn a decent amount of masking – without realizing what I was doing and how unhealthy this habit was – and I was getting by. Sure, I was severely depressed, laying in bed playing video games and eating unreasonable amount of candy while still somehow losing weight, but at least I managed to go to school in the meantime, right?
Well, that collapsed too, as the anxiety was reaching its peak and I quit school. I went back a year later and tried my hand at a different degree, only for the system to be designed in such a way that I was not able to navigate it. Putting aside the cost of studying and the difficulty of the subject matter, dealing with deadlines, signing up, scheduling and sudden changes was just not something I was capable of doing, and I quite quickly had to recognize that and move down to a lower difficulty of education. To briefly touch upon this, higher education here is split into three difficulty levels, the top two being considered education and the lower one is more practical and much easier. I don’t intend to be mean to people who do the lower version by calling it much easier, but the jump is kind of crazy, having experienced it myself. I believe this leads to a big barrier between groups of people that is fueling the sense that we’re a class-based society despite all being the same, but I digress.
After getting my degree in Business Economics at this lower level, I realized pretty quickly that I was not built for work life. I got panic attacks on the regular and some of the simplest tasks within this field were completely beyond my capabilities. Making a phone call to a customer? I’d genuinely rather staple my nutsack to the ceiling and hang suspended from it. Take in that visual. That’s how much I hate phoning strangers. I even tried to get a partial disability fund from the government, but they told me I’d be fine. I have thrown away their papers on this subject somewhat recently, but it basically said that if I could find a job that “didn’t have any deadlines, interactions with strangers, no pressure from bosses and allowed for me to work in a quiet space and still make a good wage” I would be fine, so I didn’t need help from the government. Yeah, that was a low point.
Then how did I climb back out of this pit? It was partially luck, but it was a lot of hard work too. The decade of therapy definitely helped. The cognitive behavioral therapy I was taught wasn’t good for my mental health in the long run, but it definitely taught me some skills I can abuse to get by. Stumbling into education might have been the most insane decision I’ve ever made, but it’s also one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I genuinely enjoy teaching, despite it having all the things that I should hate in a job. Close cooperation with coworkers, constant social interactions, public speaking, working with constantly changing variables and of course the noise. Did you know that a room full of 13 year olds is loud? Of course you did, even one of the little fuckers will drive you up the wall if you’re unlucky. I love these kids but sometimes I would like to just stuff them into a soundproof room and lose the key.
I suppose I have to thank my English teacher at my aforementioned MBO education for this decision. Both of my English teachers there. The first year I had a teacher for English that I hated. I was getting top marks every time yet somehow this seemed to piss her off. When I helped my classmates with their English I got told off because I might be explaining it wrong. How bad can you be as a teacher? Motivating students to help each other is something that we all strive for as teachers. Then the teacher I had the year after that was much better and she told me I should perhaps consider doing something with the English language. So I applied for English culture and language studies, and promptly got rejected. It was too complex for me and although I hate to say it, I’m not nearly as smart as I used to think I was. So the only real option left was to study to become an English teacher and then pivot into translation work as soon as possible.
As you know by now, that pivot never happened, as I ended up quite enjoying my first internship as a teacher. Sure, it was absolutely nerve-wracking and I was terrible at it, but the way the kids tried to bond with me and even wrote me a card after I left – definitely the idea of my coworker, but still – kind of felt nice. I hadn’t had that feeling from a job before. Feeling satisfied with what you’ve done. And being involved in things around the school also felt kind of neat. It felt like I was actually being useful, despite having no real world skills. So I decided to stick with teaching a little while longer but it wasn’t until I taught special education for a year that I fully fell in love with the job. This happened during the accursed Covid times, so there are a lot of bad memories mixed in with the good, but teaching a small group of kids with severe mental health issues that even someone like me with pretty bad autism can make it in the world is a feeling I will never forget. Hearing that one of the boys went home and told his parents that “his teacher also has anxiety attacks just like him and he managed to become a teacher” is arguably the biggest compliment a person can receive. The rest is history. I finished my final internship and then got a job as a teacher at my current school. I’m starting my fourth year there after the summer and I wouldn’t even change this job for being a writer, what used to be my dream job. I’d much rather keep this job and write as a hobby, as I’m doing now. The meds helped me tremendously with the anxiety that I was still experiencing and allowed me to enjoy the good aspects of this job while numbing the stuff that made me want to pick at my own skin and eat the flesh off of my fingers. Yeah, I did that, it was not good.
So let’s bring it all back to now. I’m talking about this all because I am struggling with the final steps of getting my actual teaching degree. As of writing this, I am missing 3 courses, two of which are mostly completed and just need to be handed in. I’ve been struggling a lot with getting the work done and I really needed to bring myself back into a more positive mindset. And nothing is better for that than to look back at how much of a complete and total failure I used to be and then compare it to how good I am doing now. Patting myself on the back from time to time is great, even if you also need to acknowledge that autism and the anxiety are still there, and didn’t magically disappear. I’ll probably struggle with anxiety, exhaustion and overthinking things for the rest of my life and that is something I have accepted. But hidden behind this is a very important lesson that I want to teach as many people as possible. If you just keep trying, you’ll eventually find the right place. Give it a month, a year, a decade (it took me over a decade to get to where I am now) but you will find your place in the world. And if you approach the journey with kindness, you’ll be surprised by how many people will end up sticking with you throughout the journey. Thanks for reading, tune in tomorrow for the return of The Hesitant Hero volume 5!
Opal Kaharis 