u/B_Treasures

Today I had a mental breakdown because my mother and aunt were coming to visit for the weekend and ended up coming a bit earlier than expected.
I feel a sense of guilt about it for a few reasons. One being I love my mother and aunt very much and I was excited to have them.
I was expecting to have at least an hour to tidy my home and get everything perfect. I am mad at myself for even making the mistake of expecting. However my guests arrived only 5 minutes after I got home from work. I was already feeling stressed about hosting since I took on more work this week than usual, I was running behind on everything I needed to do at home. I reached my breaking point when I saw their car pull up my drive way and then looked back at all the tasks I still needed to check off my list. The main reason I just feel absolutely terrible is that I have a long history with mental illness. I was on medication after struggling for years with depression and social anxiety. The pressure of social structures, the uncomfortableness of togetherness and the immense self realization of the mundane panic attacks, anxiety attacks and meltdowns were a very constant and reoccurring problem.
I am 28 years old and this is something I’ve struggled with all my life and I am not open about it at all. I understand that healing is not a linear path and it’s not so black and white. I realize that this is how I feel, this is who I am and I am no longer taking prescription medication. It’s almost like I told myself, make a decision and try. So it’s been a very long time since I’ve had the full blown sweaty, shaky, breathing like crazy, crying kind of freak out. And I’m pissed. Like someone relapsing just to start all over again at day 1. Mental illness is an everyday battle of control. I fear sometimes I am hiding it, trying to subdue it. Am I really just going to be so unpredictable I could crash out like this at the smallest inconvenience? I thought I was good, I’m trying to prepare for motherhood and I’m thinking to myself I will be a horrible parent. There’s no way I can handle that. But no, I can’t let myself think like that. I told myself there was no way I could handle an actual job, I work in finances now and I am fricking sick at my job. I told myself I could never enjoy others company and here I am hosting for my loving family. Am I masking? Am I trying to push parts of myself away to fit in and be “normal”? Maybe it’s a good thing I can still flip the heck out and express some emotions. Maybe it’s society’s way of trying to be perfect all the time and sometimes you just need to feel angry, overwhelmed and frustrated and that’s okay. All I know is when I told myself you can either do this or not, maybe I underestimated the surrender to conform. I thought that if I just did what everyone else would do I’d be okay. Am I an imposter? How long will I actually be able to keep up the facade.
Anyway my mother and aunt almost left when they arrived because they were so uncomfortable but then I bought them steak dinner and life goes on.