#im literally trembling with stress sometimes and school is killing me

[extemporary-username]

Looking up while brushing my teeth

It's me in the mirror

Hadn't seen him in a while

Welcome back, me

[ladymusic600]

ET

My mom didn’t make a lot of money and my father left before i was born, I was already dealing with the shame of receiving free school lunches and the looks associated with that. Some of my school friends laughed and poked fun. They chuckled and I even joked about it with them. But for me, on the inside, it wasn’t funny at all. I know how tough it can be to use a soup spoon or button a shirt. I struggle with these seemingly easy, day-to-day tasks too. But I think it shows your true character to keep soldiering on and finding a way, day after day, to keep rising above the challenges. This is a nerve disorder causing uncontrollable shaking usually to the top half of the body. The tremors can make easy and everyday tasks so much more difficult. These tremors can make something as easy as feeding yourself, dressing yourself a challenge. A person with these tremors can have difficulty using a spoon or picking up a glass without spilling what is inside. This is something i have had sense birth. It truly does affect my entire body: my arms, hands, legs(which make me fall and trip), lips, stomach. It even affects my voice, which I find very stressful as it often sounds like I am about to cry when I am in a nervous situation- so phone calls would, naturally, be another source of anxiety for me as I was always worried the person on the other end of the phone would think I was upset. There are many factors that exasperate and intensify my tremor which include: anxiety, being hungry, being too tired, being too cold, being too hot, adrenaline, caffeine and the worst of all: being hungover. There is another huge point to cover here- alcohol completely gets rid of the tremor and when I say it completely gets rid of it, I mean it becomes non-existent, doctors say its ok to have a little but come on? wouldn't you drink like a fish out of water if it made you normal. Therefore throughout my teens I would often drink to self-medicate and relieve the stress that the tremor would put on me. Alcohol would also allow me to do everyday things that I couldn’t do with the tremor (for instance: walking down steps(i need to hold on someone or something), taking a drink, eating soup, writing, the list goes on and on.) I remember enjoying the feeling the alcohol gave me as it made me feel like a ‘normal’ person and I couldn’t believe that people were actually living their lives with this feeling of normality and I was extremely jealous of that. Imagine that, the one cure to your condition, is something that can actually kill you (or is extremely dangerous). But this was a really big problem for me and I was in denial for years that I had become dependent on drinking to calm my tremor and my anxiety. I had normalized using alcohol to self-medicate and kept it a secret for years. I decided to have a drink to calm myself down and stop my legs from shaking, when going out to meet new friends. Of course as one does when socializing this led to another drink and then another. The next morning and I realize my tremor is so bad that I can barely even stand up. So, I went through my options and decided the only real way I could even get out of bed was to have another drink… so I did. This cycle continued drinking, waking up with a hangover, not being able to stand/walk and then drinking again to be able to continue with daily life. The thing is my friends and family would have to carry me days after...So naturally i stopped drinking all together. People don't understand that one day you can be happy and notice its not as bad as you remember but then....there are those days where I have trouble holding things, i drop things on my feet, i fall over a ghost foot, needing help down stairs, i cut my hand, burn myself, can't dress myself, sound like im having a mental break down...i could go on and on how bad it gets....But Imagine waking up one day and trying to drink a cup of hot coffee without burning yourself. Just imagine when you have your good days and bad days, meaning good days being where you can do stuff without even remembering you have this shaking problem. To bad days literally where the moment you get up you know its going to be a long day of wanting to scream cry and throw everything in frustration because you can’t feed yourself or dress yourself, that you are kinda like a new born again, that you just want to go back to sleep and wake up the next day. But the next day might be the same or better you never know. And you know whats sad about this is im a small person and between 100-106 pounds and short and cops always stop me and ask for my id because they think im on drugs….i only met one cop and that day sadly was at night i was working on a children’s haunted train ride and we were both zombies. Not once did he every think that i was on drugs and it was like 60ish degrees out side and that was cold to me so i was shaking like crazy. I came to realize when i got home he just thought i was cold…then i got into my own head and started getting depressed. The thought of people feeling sorry for me, thinking of me as ‘helpless’, or weak was just awful heartbreaking and was one of the reasons why I kept it a secret for so long. I know if i every have a kid in the future that they will have this as well and that makes me cry thinking about them going through this as well. Im going put a innocent child in this world to get bullied like i did and not be able to do things on there own... Im still to scared to tell people about it, it's embarrassing. Eventually it will get worse which makes me sad but even then as far as neurological disorders go, it’s not as bad as it could be and for that I’m grateful. Like When im paying for stuff god i feel horrible because im shaking and nervous which makes it worse and im left feeling guilty and apologizing to everyone every time. Sometimes it makes me want to scream, fall to my knees and cry because i feel like im just slowing people down or they get embarrassed by me. I have difficulty cooking and have burned and cut myself multiple times, I can’t drive when my tremors are bad because Im scared…I’m at the point now where I avoid eating and drinking in public even if im out all day i still won’t. I’m socially awkward all the time even when im not shaking im just shy and weird haha. See The dating scene can be a bit tricky, especially with people who aren’t really used to seeing you, or anyone else, with tremors. I NEVER been on a date in my life and im kind of scared to go on one because i have to wear wrist and forearm weights. Essential Tremors is a progressive neurological condition that causes a shaking within the hands, head, voice or legs and in some cases an internal shaking is reported. Essential Tremors are most normally confused with Parkinson’s but is more common and while Parkinson’s lessens with more movement, ET worsens with movement, anxiety, stress and strain. Unlike Parkinson's, which is a degenerative disease that causes someone to lose brain cells, essential tremor is not a degenerative disorder. Usually, the tremor that's characteristic of essential tremor occurs while the person is performing a movement-oriented activity – such as eating, drinking, writing, typing or brushing teeth – or when the hand is in a still but outstretched position (called a postural tremor). The severity can range from a barely noticeable trembling that's exacerbated by stress, anxiety, fatigue, excess caffeine or certain stimulant asthma medications to a severe, disabling tremor that has a significant impact on your ability to perform daily activities. For people with severe tremor that doesn't respond to drugs, surgical therapies and other treatments are gaining traction. With deep brain stimulation, a probe is implanted in the thalamus, the part of the brain that causes tremors, and a wire runs from the probe to a pacemaker-like device implanted in the chest. "We use the pacemaker to jam the tremor signal inside the brain," "If the tremor gets worse, we can dial up the stimulation." Hearing that scares me, because you can't be asleep when you have this surgery, you have to be awake so they know they have it in the right place. Recent epidemiological studies indicate that individuals with ET are at slightly increased risk of developing dementia (particularly Alzheimer’s disease) compared to their age-matched counterparts without ET. Similar studies also show that persons with ET have a more than four-times increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The mechanisms for these associations are currently under study. so….would you date me knowing possibly by the time im 40-50ish that i might need help with almost everything i do? would you date me knowing i could possibly give ET to our kid? would you date me knowing there are times where i scream bloody murder because i can’t handle the shaking?  would you date me knowing that there will be times where i zone out and get depressed because i either know my out come or because i im scared of it? i want someone who loves me and not because of sympathy…