(no subject)
Perhaps because the weather feels spring-like this evening, and in spite of the brown scent of autumn in the air, I felt restless when I arrived home this evening - I certainly did not want another Friday night alone. Over the years I have become less and less enamored with flying solo in public, but this sensation of exuberant agitation was strong enough that I resolved to take myself out to dinner. Arriving at the restaurant of choice, I contentedly sipped my glass of Merlot, and although the only person I interacted with was the impossibly young and tiny waitress, I felt connected to everyone in the joint. I launched into my delicious meal against the background soundtrack of happy chatter and laughter, forks and knives tinkling against china, and the mellow susurrus of outdoor traffic.
Then, within the space of a heartbeat, I found myself in the throes of a screaming panic attack, and the existential nightmare began.
For those who have been fortunate enough to never have known one, it is almost impossible to explain how truly terrifying an anxiety event can be. I experienced my first panic attack at age nine. In a futile attempt to describe what I was feeling, I remember frightfully exclaiming to my mother, “Nothing seems real! Nothing seems real!” Although other symptoms are in their own way distressing, the dissociative state experienced during an attack remains, for me, the most horrifying and insidious. My aunt, who happened to be visiting that evening, took note of my facial pallor, drained white from fear, and proclaimed that I was having a “fainting spell.” Thus I would refer to subsequent attacks in childhood as “my fainting spells,” although I never once lost consciousness while they occurred. I was visited with a final panic attack at age twelve (my parents were having a house party, and the flashing bulb of someone taking a photograph inexplicably triggered the incident), and then did not experience another one for almost twenty seven years.
Curiously, they did not reoccur following David’s death, but reemerged with a vengeance after my Dad died. They became so debilitating that I required medical assistance. The doctor prescribed Alprazolam, Xanax’s generic equivalent, and just knowing I had my “chill pills” with me seemed to greatly mitigate the frequency of episodes, until, as in my childhood, they seemed to stop altogether. I would experience a mild flair up here and there, but nothing I couldn’t deal with on my own. I have not had a full-fledged event in at least two years.
But tonight was the real deal. I have no explanation for it. I was eternally grateful that I was a mere 4.5 miles from home, because the drive, harrowing as it was, would have otherwise seemed impossible.
I’m home, a little less of a wreck than I was an hour ago, and in complete awe of my own subconscious strength.
It is all internal, all inside me… something powerful enough to knock me sideways.
I just wish my subconscious wouldn’t be such a dick to me.
Then, within the space of a heartbeat, I found myself in the throes of a screaming panic attack, and the existential nightmare began.
For those who have been fortunate enough to never have known one, it is almost impossible to explain how truly terrifying an anxiety event can be. I experienced my first panic attack at age nine. In a futile attempt to describe what I was feeling, I remember frightfully exclaiming to my mother, “Nothing seems real! Nothing seems real!” Although other symptoms are in their own way distressing, the dissociative state experienced during an attack remains, for me, the most horrifying and insidious. My aunt, who happened to be visiting that evening, took note of my facial pallor, drained white from fear, and proclaimed that I was having a “fainting spell.” Thus I would refer to subsequent attacks in childhood as “my fainting spells,” although I never once lost consciousness while they occurred. I was visited with a final panic attack at age twelve (my parents were having a house party, and the flashing bulb of someone taking a photograph inexplicably triggered the incident), and then did not experience another one for almost twenty seven years.
Curiously, they did not reoccur following David’s death, but reemerged with a vengeance after my Dad died. They became so debilitating that I required medical assistance. The doctor prescribed Alprazolam, Xanax’s generic equivalent, and just knowing I had my “chill pills” with me seemed to greatly mitigate the frequency of episodes, until, as in my childhood, they seemed to stop altogether. I would experience a mild flair up here and there, but nothing I couldn’t deal with on my own. I have not had a full-fledged event in at least two years.
But tonight was the real deal. I have no explanation for it. I was eternally grateful that I was a mere 4.5 miles from home, because the drive, harrowing as it was, would have otherwise seemed impossible.
I’m home, a little less of a wreck than I was an hour ago, and in complete awe of my own subconscious strength.
It is all internal, all inside me… something powerful enough to knock me sideways.
I just wish my subconscious wouldn’t be such a dick to me.