About That Time I Got Cramps In My Brain

Picture this: I’m thirteen years old. In most ways, I’m a typical American middle school girl. Insecure. Fidgety. Bookish. Prone to fits of puberty-induced sulking. My teachers would say that I’m not the brightest crayon in the box. It’s a typical school day. I’m in the hallway, walking to my first class. School insists on starting at 7 AM for some reason, so it’s ungodly early in the morning.

I reach the doorway of my homeroom, and I just . . . freeze. That’s the only way I can describe it. I just freeze. Everything stops. My body stops moving. My mind goes blank. I no longer know where I am or why I’m here. I don’t recognize anything around me. There’s nothing happening inside my head. I never realized how noisy my thoughts were until they suddenly disappeared. There’s this massive empty space inside my skull. It feels like the floor has dropped out from under me and I’m falling through darkness like Alice down the rabbit hole.

Then my heart starts pounding. Really, really hard. It’s hammering so hard it hurts. This has never happened before. I’m convinced I’m having a heart attack. I can’t move my body at all. I drop my backpack and can’t pick it up. Kids are knocking into me, but I can’t get out of their way.

My lungs are frozen, so I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow because my throat is frozen. I feel like I’m being strangled. My muscles squeeze tighter, tighter, tighter until my whole body shakes. My hands, feet, and face are tingling. I’m sweating and shivering at the same time. Everything hurts. I’m pretty sure I’m dying. My head is empty, and I have no control over my body.

Someone is yelling at me. It takes me a while to realize it’s my friend. I can’t see her because most of my vision is blacked out, and I can’t hear her because sound is . . . broken? My ears are ringing. The noise around me keeps getting ear-drum-bursting loud and then muffled like I’m under water. I can’t understand anything she says.

She grabs my arm and drags/carries me down the hall. I manage to get my legs moving, even though the muscles are cramped and I’m tripping over myself.

I must look pretty horrific. As soon as we get near the office, a bunch of ladies run out and pull me into a tiny back room. They help me onto a cot. Then they leave to find the nurse. School hasn’t officially started yet, so they don’t know if the nurse is in the building.

As soon as I’m alone in a quiet place, I feel better. I can breathe again. My brain (mostly) comes back online. I don’t feel like I’m dying anymore, but I have no idea what just happened to me.

When the nurse finally shows up, she takes my temperature and asks a thousand rapid-fire questions. I can’t answer them very well because my jaw is still tight, and my tongue is still numb. It’s hard for my brain to find words. I just keep saying, “I want to go home.”

The nurse asks a thousand more questions. Then she diagnoses me with . . .
Menstrual cramps.

By the time my mom arrives to take me home, I’ve spent a long time on the cot with my eyes shut tight. I’m exhausted and achy, but all the other symptoms are gone.

On the drive home, my mom gives me a lecture on menstrual cramps. I’m thirteen and new to all this “being a woman” business. I don’t have any experience with menstrual cramps, so I trust that the nurse made the right diagnosis. My mom tells me that I’ll get cramps every month for the next 40 years. Every month! I’m terrified because I can’t survive 40 years of this. She tells me that all women get cramps. I have to learn to live with them. This news makes me feel weak and stupid. If all women get menstrual cramps, why hadn’t I seen a woman freeze before? What is wrong with me? If other women can handle their cramps, why am I too weak to handle mine?

I wish that was the end of the story, but it’s barely the beginning. As I got older, my strange symptoms got more intense, more bizarre, and more dangerous. I started sleeping all day instead of going to school. I quickly figured out that this mystery illness definitely wasn’t menstrual cramps.

I was 16 when the adults in my life started speculating that I may have a mental illness (or two). I was 26 when I found a medication that mostly controls my depression and random freezes. (Or random panic attacks, if you prefer the correct term.)

Getting diagnosed and treated for a mental illness is often a long, frustrating, lonely process. I think this is where books and other media can help. As a teenager, I was a voracious reader, but I never encountered a character who had a mental illness similar to mine. Maybe seeing someone like me would’ve helped me feel less confused.

That’s why I’m thrilled whenever I find a young adult book with an accurate depiction of mental illness. Kids need these books because, somewhere in the world, there’s a not-too-bright middle schooler who’s been badly misinformed about menstrual cramps.

Now for the book recommendations. (That’s why you’re here, right?) I know that everybody’s experience with mental illness is different, but here are a few books that successfully capture what it’s like for me:

It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
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Thank you to Shannon for hosting Shattering Stigmas and giving me the space to share my strange little story!