This is What a Meltdown Feels Like

I didn’t know I was having meltdowns until I was nearly fifty years old. I thought that I was just getting upset at something and needing to go home to deal with my emotions. I didn’t understand that other people’s emotions weren’t as violent as mine or that they didn’t require several days to recover from an outburst. I remember at some point a friend saying to me something like, “But after you have a good cry, you feel better,” and I stared at her thinking that this was impossible. I had never had a good cry I felt better from afterward.

The first public meltdown I remember was in high school, after I’d come back from my sophomore year in Germany as an exchange student. I was intent on keeping up with all my “gifted” and academically accelerated friends, despite the fact that I’d missed a year of school. I signed up for Spanish 2 without taking Spanish 1, and I was taking eight classes in total, including one during lunch. I was also on the swim team and was waking up at 5 a.m. every day, then heading to school without breakfast.

In essence, I was massively stressed and I think everyone around me knew it and puzzled over it. But I didn’t know it. I wasn’t aware enough of my own body’s attempts to communicate distress to me to see the problem. Friends asked me why I was doing this and I just said that I felt I had to. My parents kept trying to suggest that I take an easier load, but the only thing I heard them saying to me was that I wasn’t tough enough to handle this, so I was determined to prove that I was.