Hey guys,
I just wanted to take the time and talk about how I'm feeling..I know some of you will completely understand, and we're all here for support..right? Anyway, my situation: I'm a sophomore in college. The first semester of freshman year, I lived in the dorms and found out my roomie has some sort of weird allergic reaction to..something. She doesn't know what, but when she has a reaction, she can get really really sick from it. That kinda freaked me out. Heck, I had an anxiety attack driving to college because I was scared to share a room with somebody. Anyway, I was okay first semester..had fun and everything. Then a couple weeks into second semester, I started having depressive episodes. My roommate finally did throw up (in our suite bathroom) I couldn't hear her, but I heard the toilet flushing multiple times and knew that she had gotten sick. I am proud to say that I managed to be sympathetic towards her. Anyway, after that, my anxiety grew increasingly worse. I wasn't comfortable around my roommate anymore because she had gotten sick around me before. I wasn't very comfortable in a classroom setting or the school cafeteria. It got really bad. I'd fall apart every night. I wanted to kill myself. My fear had totally gone out of control and I hardly had a moment where I wasn't thinking something related to emetophobia. I'm sure some of you know just how horrible that is and how fast it gobbles up your entire waking life. I would get so anxious that I couldn't even more, afraid that if I did, I'd do something that would make me sick or I'd go somewhere where somebody would be sick.
Anyway...to make a long story short, I dropped out of school for that semester and went to live with my parents (who were also in the process of moving from the home i had lived in for 12 years previously). I started seeing a therapist, and he helped me deal with my anxiety a lot better. I picked up some relaxation techniques to deal with anxiety that I could also apply to feeling nauseas. It helped. I was pretty much afraid to travel in a car for any extended period of time (I would always wind up feeling nauseas and then kinda sorta panick) So in May I moved back to the town my school was in with my boyfriend and we have an apartment together here. We were originally going to get a 1 bed/1 bath apartment, but that wasn't going to fly after my freakout. So we're in a 2 bed 2 bath right now. Most of the time he stays with me in the master bedroom but I can send him out if I need the space to myself (or if he gets sick). I've beendealing with it so far, but my health is slowly deteriorating. I don't enjoy the summer weather. I used to have days all the time in the summer when it just felt good to be alive. Guess what? I don't have those anymore. Just about every day I have at least one spell of nausea. For the most part, I eat plenty, sometimes on the side of too much. I've only had one or two anxiety attacks since I've been here..and those were very very mild (I was in control of myselfthe whole time)
But then I went to visit my parents at my Aunt's farm. My boyfriend and I drove u p after he got off from work and got in rather late. My dad habitually drinks, and when we got there he was staggering and almost spilled his drink several times. So we went up to their room and chatted and then finally got ready to go to bed. Two minutes after my boyfriend and I lay down, my dad started making weird noises and kinda jerking forward. I had never seen my dad throw up before, so I didn't know that he was gagging. He just kept doing it while he was asleep...I was watching everything. Then my mom tried to wake him up and get him to go into the bathroom. At this point, I figured out what was going on and I was lying with my pillow clamped ove