Adrianna Jaccoma
Adrianna Jaccoma (she/they) is a recent graduate of Rider University where she studied English and Psychology. She is honored to have this piece be a part of this issue of Venture.
When I was six years old and cried during the birthday song, nobody thought it meant I had anxiety. When I was eight years old and throwing up everyday before school, nobody thought it meant I had anxiety. When I was nine years old and crying every time my mom would leave me for the night or the weekend, nobody thought it meant I had anxiety.
When I was in kindergarten, I had an emotional support aid because I would not get off the bus when it got to school because I was so nervous to go into school. And in 2008, mental health issues were just something that crazy people had. They weren’t as concerned with high anxiety levels in the late 2000s as they are now. Every kid has trouble adjusting to school, but for some reason I was different.
I remember in kindergarten we had a center day thing when everyone in the school would go around to these different tables and our parents would volunteer to help out. My mom was a stay at home mom at the time, so she would always volunteer to come in and help. I remember the one day she was there I went up to her center and only stayed at hers. The teacher did not like that I wasn’t “doing my work” and “only wanted to be with my mom” and tried to pull me away from my own mother. I obviously threw a fit– because how dare she pull me away from my mother– that I became so insufferable that I had to sit in the nurse’s office drinking Hi-C juice until my mother was out of the building and we were able to go back to class.
Obviously I don’t remember much about kindergarten because that was years ago, so I don’t really remember much about how my anxiety presented itself at that age. But I do remember that fire drills scared the shit out of me (and they still do). Something about the loud siren and buzzing noise would make me start crying. But when I was still in kindergarten, our classroom was next to the custodians office and they would shut the office door when a fire drill was about to happen. I still remember the feeling I would get when I saw the office door shut. It was like my stomach had dropped 500 feet. But there was nothing I could have done to make it better. I didn’t know when it was coming and couldn’t prepare myself for it. And I still had to do whatever we were doing in class while we were waiting for the drill to happen. I think I would be sobbing when the alarm went off and would not stop crying till the alarm went off and we were back inside. My disability and sensory issues were definitely in full force there.
When I was in fourth grade I was on hall patrol. I remember I had a gut feeling that we would have a fire drill all that day and I was standing at my post that morning sobbing. Once the bell rang and I was released, I was taken to my social worker’s office to talk to her. I basically was telling her about my fear of the fire alarm and how I just had a gut feeling that it would go off that day. And of course my anxieties were right and we would have one that day. But she gave me a stress ball to cope and told me she would come support me before it went off. She kind of helped me with that.
I can’t tell what it was that made me so afraid of fire drills. Maybe it was the fear of the unknown or the loud noises. But who knows what might have happened in the past that might have caused me to be so afraid of these loud noises.
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Another very fun thing I got from my anxiety was being deathly afraid of when we would go to restaurants and they would sing happy birthday to people. I remember when we would go to Friendlys (which we frequented a lot when I was growing up) and my parents/grandparents would have to ask our server if they would be singing the birthday song so they could be prepared to take me outside when it would happen. I recently discovered that when we would go out with my grandparents and they would be singing the birthday song, my grandfather would always volunteer to bring me outside when the singing would happen so he could have a cigarette while we were out there (I miss him).
Even when I was little and would go to my friend’s birthday parties, I hated the birthday song and hated even more when people would clap at the end. So my own birthday parties were literal hell for me because I wasn’t able to go to the bathroom while everyone sang. But this is how I learned how to applaud in Sign Language– someone figured out this is how we could avoid the loud noise of clapping for me while we still clapped. I eventually overcame this and am now okay with hearing the birthday song and people clapping. I feel like when you are younger and you hear certain things they sound so much worse than they do when you grow up. When you are younger the world feels so scary to you, it’s not scary anymore.
I mentioned a lot about the similarities between my anxiety and disability which is what everyone just thought it was for a while. Sure my anxiety may stem from my disability, but anxiety and CP are two different things. I feel like for so long people would say that it was just my disability and that nothing else could be wrong with me– boy were they wrong.
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Every morning before school in like second or third grade I would throw up before school. I remember watching the bus drive by the house after coming out of the bathroom after throwing up all morning. My mom never thought that I was throwing up from anxiety and it was that bad, we just thought my stomach was so sensitive that I couldn’t eat breakfast so early in the morning. And while that is kind of still true, it was majorly from having such bad anxiety. This would inevitably lead me to have poor eating habits– but we don’t have to get into that too. I remember my mom tried to get me to have Carnation Instant Breakfast shakes in the morning to try and hold me over before having snack at school (of course I had the chocolate ones, not vanilla. I’m not a psychopath, I have morals,) but of course that didn’t work either because my stomach would still become too sensitive for me. When I was in elementary school, my handwriting was so bad that I needed someone to come and write for me. And when it was time for her to come write for me, it was snack time and I used to tell her that I wasn’t having breakfast so I was very hungry by the time it got to having snack. I don’t remember what her response to that was– I told Henrietta a lot of dumb shit during her time with me.
Around fifth grade, I got my first dog Spike. He was this tiny boston terrier who was afraid of everything that is afraid of anything smaller than he is. I was initially afraid of dogs and was so against the idea of getting a dog because of how scared I was. I didn’t even go into the pen to pet him when we first went to pick him up. But the day after we brought him home from the shelter, I was all over him. He quickly became my best friend. Whenever I get sad or anxious, I go right over him and cuddle him and he immediately calms me down, and then will start barking cause he heard the wind blow.
High school was when it became more prevalent in my life. I remember one day during junior year having a conversation with my best friend about her social anxiety. I remember this moment so clearly– we were coming out of our nutrition class and going down stairs to our theater class. She was telling me about finding a dress to wear to her field hockey banquet and said she didn’t even want to go and said she might have social anxiety. I had no clue what it was (come to think of it I didn’t even know what many mental health issues were,) and she told me it was how the thought of social interactions may give someone anxiety. At the time that definition had really resonated with me and I told her “oh I might have social anxiety too.” I will never forget how she responded with “no you have regular anxiety.”
During COVID my anxiety was understandably high. I was only seeing my family, I couldn’t see any of my friends, I was basically just in my room all day watching Netflix. And don’t even get me started on online school. I did actually like it and I found it to be fine, but I also didn’t like having to sit on Zoom for six hours a day, it was so fucking boring. But I remember my senior year I was having panic attacks every morning during my math class. It was so random and I don’t really remember why it was occurring and at 7 am, crazy.
But at least once a day during 2021, I was crying every day over random stuff and was having frequent panic attacks. There was nothing that I could put my finger on that my anxiety was coming from. My parents didn’t know what to do– they thought they were doing good to me but unfortunately everything they were trying to help me with just wasn’t working. But then they caved and got me into therapy.
Starting therapy was honestly the best thing to happen to me. Talking it out with another person was very helpful for me and developing coping strategies was a game changer. From there she also suggested that I should start seeing a psychiatrist and get on medication. Seeing a psychiatrist however, was the worst thing that happened to me (I literally dread having to go every single time.) Though I hate going to the psychiatrist, being on medication has helped my anxiety in great ways and I’ve now been able to manage it in ways that I haven’t before.
My anxiety isn’t perfect, I’m not perfect. I’m still working through a lot of things and trying to figure everything out (I’m literally just a girl.) But from here it only gets easier, from here we go up, there is no going back.