03.09.10

When Panic Attacks

I originally posted this on April 4, 2007. It’s amazing what documenting your own life can show you – just under three years later I’m struck by the same sounds, smells, the same throbbing anxiety and racing heart. It’s chemicals, it’s stress, it’s my own mind malfunctioning as I sit here willing myself to control it. And it replays itself, over and over, down to the last detail. My heart races, my head spins.

I hate this.

I’m in the bathroom as I write this, sitting on the cold tile, my face against the cool cupboards. There’s a knob in my temple, but I don’t care. I don’t want to move. I can’t move. One move and I lose it. Nobody move, nobody get hurt.

I am in the middle of a panic attack.

It’s a big one, a monster. Usually when I feel one come on I take my Super Happy Calm Pill ^TM and it dissipates in about 20 minutes. Not this time. This one is bad.

I was but 10 minutes into my commute home this evening when I felt the familiar little tugs of nausea. Given my stomach issues, this nausea thing is fairly routine. I quickly realized, however, that this nausea wasn’t the kind that just goes away with a sip of water. Immediately, I grabbed for a Super Happy Calm Pill ^TM with a water chaser. My pill, my buddy and me. The pill that helps me get through life when I can’t. The pill I fear I’ll never be able to live without, the pill that will always have to bail me out, rescue me. My calm. As it careens down, down, down inside me, I take a deep breath. Usually the realization that it’s out of my hands and into the wonder that is pharmaceuticals is enough for me. I slowly start feeling better as the seconds, minutes pass.

Not this time.

I tried to think about all those techniques PT, my therapist back in Michigan, told me to employ when the going got tough. I can’t remember, my mind is racing. Something about breathing. Something about reciting the alphabet in my head in a slow, drawn out manner. Breathe in…breathe out…breathe in…breathe out. My mind is still racing. My salivary glands are furiously streaming fluid in preparation for the big heave. I won’t. I can’t. I’m in a full car, people everywhere. My senses prickle, my nerves exposed. I can smell the woman sleeping beside me: sweat, work, stale breath, pantyhose. I can smell the car, the gum the girl next to me is popping. Everything is loud. Everything IS PRESENTING ITSELF IN ALL CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS. It is defeaning. I realize that I am sweating. Prickling. Tingling. Numb. Breathe in…breathe out…you can do this, you have to do this.

But I have 40 minutes left to go!, I say inside my head.

You can do this, I say silently, you will not throw up. You will not have an episode on this train like you did last year in your car pool. You will not bring anyone else into this mess, the mess that is you. You will not be a burden. YOU WILL NOT. Keep breathing.

I breathe for a few beats and my mind wanders. The smells, my God, the smells. I think of last year, how I couldn’t make it home before throwing up in the car. I think of the cold concrete on my forehead as I crouched, waiting for the heave, the seizing paralysis, the gasping for air that comes when one is vomiting bile, vomiting far beyond what’s in one’s stomach. I think of the burn. I think of how everything got a little quieter after a few moments, I think of the people passing by whispering, “is she all right?” I feel the saliva pooling. I am but a rickety old fishing boat in the middle of a violent ocean storm – rocking back and forth, barely hanging on, one crashing wave from capsizing.

My train-mates are acting as though nothing is wrong, as though they don’t hear the battering crashes of my ragged, racing heartbeat, my irregular breathing. It feels as though I’m invisible but shouting, “I’M RIGHT HERE! HELP ME!”. Nobody can see that I’m going crazy. Nobody can see the attack of anxiety that is beating me savagely. How do people not see, I wonder. My mind skitters and jumps wildly. I’m going to throw up. I’m crazy. Why does this happen to me? Throw up. Vomit. I’m going to puke and where will it go and what if I get it on the lady next to me I don’t want to get it on my shoes I love these shoes and these pants no I can’t puke on these pants oh my god it’s going to come no swallow breathe breathe breathe swallow you will not throw up on this train STACY YOU WILL NOT THROW UP ON THIS TRAIN you are not going crazy a million people have these it isn’t exclusive to me I don’t want to be nuts imbalanced crazy WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN TO ME?

It’s hard not to resort to victimizing myself. I feel cheated, it’s not fair. At the same time, I know that I survive this and I will continue to deal with it. I’m not a victim. Still, why?

I put my head in my hands and try with all my might to resist the swaying of the train. I try not to think about the tingling in my hands. Is my back numb? What the…why is my back, of all things, numb? Once I realize that it’s probably because my body, in this series of moments, is not my own, I feel another surge of panic, another wave of nausea. I even fail at controlling my own body. How nice. I breathe in…breathe out…breathe in…breathe out. The pill is not working. The pill, on any given day, could take down a large horse, but not me, not this time. My God. I’m batshit. Do I need to check in somewhere? It feels like my heart is going to explode POUND POUND POUND; if it doesn’t explode I’m going to throw it up. I’m shaking, shrunken, wan. All of this is happening quietly, so quietly that no one notices. I don’t want them to notice, my God, don’t look at me. At the same time, though, I want to know that there’s something visible, that it’s real. It doesn’t feel real and yet, oddly at the same time, it feels more real than anything I’ve ever felt. It’s a moment when my body shoves me away, it overheats. I feel helpless. Nothing I can do can take these feelings away right now. I have to let it ride, try to talk my way out of it. Those of us who have experienced the terror of panic attacks know how difficult it is to talk one’s self off the ledge, as it were. It’s absurd. The mind is racing faster than one can think, it’s not like one can just say to one’s self, “I’m going to focus on breathing now and everything will be roses.” That’s not what happens. Your body, your engine, is revving. You’re in the red inside, seemingly normal outside. Is it real? Am I making it up? What is happening to me? How do I stop it? Why does this happen to me when I’ve had a good day? Things are going well, dammit, THERE’S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, NOTHING TO SEE HERE. And yet it comes. It comes when I don’t expect it, when I least expect it. It’s humbling when your body and mind rebel against you, remind you that, lest you have forgotten, you are not in control here. You can’t stop it. In a rare moment of collegiality, they gang up and bully you as though they were schoolyard bullies. Your body – nerves – and brain are simpatico: they’re both against you right now. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.

It’s hard writing through this as I feel it. I don’t have the objectivity, the stable state of mind required to put this into perspective. I can’t say I’ll be fine, this is just another anxiety attack, the tingles will go away. I’ll be fine, I’ll be okay. Right now it sounds patronizing. Screw you, Reasonable, Rational JN. How the fuck do you know it’ll be fine; can you prove it? No? THEN SHUT UP, Rational Stacy. What if it isn’t fine? What if one time it never goes away and I’m suspended in the churning storm that is my attack? What if it just…sticks…and I can’t pull myself out of it?

Again, I think of what I learned last year from Therapist PT. These aren’t exclusive to me. Lots of people have them. Is it really so bad to throw up in public? (To which I merely stared at him and blinked because, yes, it is that bad. Have you done it? It’s bad, trust me.) And then I hear him clarify that it’s not horrible, it just sucks and you’ll forget about it. It’s not as bad as you think, he says, people aren’t judging you for a misstep. As calm comes over me I realize these things with a twinge of relief.

A lot of people experience crippling anxiety, more than we think. I wrote once before, if you think that no one you know suffers from some kind of mental “thing,” you’re kidding yourself. I know this. I know that panic attacks – sometimes crippling, like today – and depression that knocks me to my knees don’t mean I’m crazy. I know, and yet I fear posting this because maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it does scream crazy. Maybe it’s 17 shades of crazy. I don’t know. I just know what I want to know, that I’m not nuts. That my future doesn’t include babbling to myself on a street corner. I want to know that I’ll kick this, that if I feel all of these things I’ll eventually be able to control it with breathing or some other technique I can never remember and certainly can’t employ when I’m in the throes of an attack. One day I’ll be better. Only now that I’ve calmed down and the nausea has subsided am I allowed to think this.

And I’m exhausted. Inner me has just run a marathon. The constant surge of adrenaline has depleted me. I’m sapped, empty, deadened. I just want to sleep. I want people to understand. It’s not crazy, but it is no doubt a form of madness. I don’t want it to be, but it is; it’s an aberrant biochemical process. But it can be fixed. It can be managed. I’m managing it. Mostly that’s enough, sometimes it is not. But someone will fix it one day. Someone has to have the answer, the magic potion to take it all away, who can give me back myself. The anxiety, realizing that it has been beaten, trounced, would sheepishly hand me back the reins of my life. I would (will?) no longer feel the pouncing seizures of anxiety, the terror, the nausea that threatens to violently spew out of me. I will no longer have to rely on a stupid pink pill to hold my hand, to take over for me when I’ve lost. One day this will happen. One day people will understand that, humbling as it is, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. One day people will see it for what it is – a disorder that can be managed, that’s relatively common, that can be spoken out loud and dealt with aggressively and without shame.

I hope.