Anxiety and me

Um, hello! Thought I'd introduce myself and tell you a little about why I'm here. Two in one! What you essentially need to know about me is that I'm a 22 -soon to be 23- year old with anxiety issues since last year.

Basically in late July 2011 I got sick. It took doctors months to figure out what was wrong with me -which meant feeling the illness' symptoms for a long time- and when they finally did, medication messed me up -terrible, horrible, not good side effects for another bunch of months-.

Somewhere in there I developed and anxiety disorder related to all these situations, to sum up: physical symptoms of illness -can be really minor but if I can relate them to my condition, which my mind always finds a way to do, I freak out-, medication -anything stronger than an aspirin needs to be miles away from me- aaand last but certainly not least: sleep. Why sleep you ask? Well, I don't know if any of you have ever been on Topiramate for any reason, but I can tell you that thing completely destroyed my head. The side effects were fatigue, insomnia and depression -to the point of being suicidal-. I can't even begin to explain how bad it was.

I was always a night person, and I used to be able to sleep 4-5 hours a night and catch up the next day during the day. Now, it's a BAD idea. In fact that is exactly why I'm here today. The Internet is my one and only drug -you probably figured out by my description that since last year I don't do drugs or drink or smoke or put anything in my body that's not 100% safe- and I actually have some good online friends. The problem our time zones aren't exactly close. I'm about 4 hours later than everyone else, so people's ideal time for being online is always late for me. It was never really a problem, until three days ago that I started RPing on Skype with a friend in Seattle. She gets online at her 10 -my 2 am- and we chat for a couple of hours. So I do end up getting 4-5 hours of sleep. Very, VERY, bad idea. As soon as I get up I'm a shrivelling mess, I can't think about anything else, I can't eat, I basically can't do anything right until I manage to calm myself down -which sometimes takes hours-.

Don't worry, I'm not that big of an idiot: I sent her a message telling her that we needed to work out a different schedule, which I'm sure we will be able to do. The problem is that I feel like crap RIGHT NOW and I needed to vent a little, and if I get lucky, someone to tell me it's going to be all right. And a hug. I've been crying like a dork for... *checks watch* like 3 hours now and coming here was the best solution I could think of.

So. This is me. In general I try to be positive, but sometimes I feel like the biggest imbecile for having such dumb triggers and not being able to do much about it. I hope I haven't scared you away and I really wish I can find some support and be able to give mine to you too!
Cheers!