It's been another normally hard day, with several anxiety attacks, a bit of shaking and trembling, a lot of that unrealistic bewilderment feeling when the thoughts race 3000 miles per hour in my head and nothing makes sense, when it seems to me that my own walls are closing in on me while I'm desperately trying to get that famous grip, but it seems that the harder I try, the more difficult it becomes to locate that badly needed grip, as though it has been hiding from me all this time on purpose. I jitter, I resist, I struggle.. but the leash around my neck is holding me back from going outside and biting this bright, shiny colorful world. I know that leash very well, I can feel it even in my sleep where everything's paradoxically normal, where I run, go everywhere without problems, meet so many people, yet there is always that well-known choking sensations that prevents me from running away.. from flying in a light blue sky filled with cotton-like clouds.. from playing, smiling, embracing sunshine and other people. It exists and gives me a lot of pain even though nobody sees it. Nobody knows. Except for four people - my parents, my psychiatrist and a dear friend. Nobody even suspects, because I'm the greatest actress living when it comes to hiding my disabilities. Why do I hide them? Because it's so hard to explain to someone who has never had a panic attack what it is, because I seem so "normal" and nothing can be seen on my face, as my mother likes to say. Because I don't want to be stigmatized. Because I'm ashamed of myself. Because.
Yet I am stigmatized in a certain way, although nobody knows. It's been almost a year and 8 months since I'm more or less housebound and you can imagine that my friends, relatives, my boyfriend, people I used to work with wanted to see me at least once in all this time. What you can't imagine is how hard it gets nowadays to make people come to visit you at your own home, even when you make the most plausible excuse of all why you can't meet them elsewhere. What you also can't imagine is how many lies a person with panic attacks has to invent in order to cover up his or her own suffering, in order to produce fake smiles or that God forsaken get-a-grip attitude when the thing you would like to do the most is to run away screaming and finally save yourself once and for all. You end up living in a constant lie that never ends, unless you find the courage to disclose those "skeletons in the closet", but you can imagine how hard it can be for someone who is by definition AFRAID all the time to find any sort of courage, let alone that courage which would spill those skeleton bones all over the floor in front of truly amazed audience of people who know you. And what is the result of this lack of courage? After a year or so your phone slowly stops ringing, because those who have invited you so many times in vain to a cup of coffee, movies, theater, nice walk on a sunny day, little trip, wild shopping adventure eventually get tired of your excuses. And probably end up thinking that you're not one bit interested in spending time with them, that you don't like them at all. So they disappear. Slowly enough, but definitely until you get up one day and realize that nobody has invited you anywhere for more than a week. You end up crying, wishing to shout so that it can be heard to the very clouds above our heads - I WOULD LIKE TO GO SO MUCH.. SO MUCH.. BUT I CAN'T.. BECAUSE I THINK I'LL FREAK OUT, LOSE CONTROL OVER MY ACTS, FORGET THE WAY BACK HOME, EMBARRASS MYSELF IN PUBLIC.. BECAUSE THEN EVERYBODY WILL KNOW...
Crying is just a temporary relief.. until the panic strikes infallibly again and you're no longer concerned with your life filled with missed opportunities, but with your own heartbeat, invisible brain cancer or some serious illness of your intestines that no doctor is capable of finding. That's how you enter a vicious circle of self-consciousness and shutting doors to reality that has already shut its on own doors on you. When I think about this, I always recall of reading somewhere that there is a book called "Get out of your head and into life", written precisely for people like me. I might even try to look for it these days.
In the meantime, I continue with my little limited life which has become pretty painful in the last 3-4 days. Last week I could stand a car ride of a mile or two and a horrific visit to my dentist. It's needless to say that I had a massive diarrhea up until 10 minutes before leaving the house and that I yelled to my mom and dad that I would prefer to go to Afghanistan than to my dentist's. I smile now when I picture my dentist who's a very calm, kind and warm man in hid mid forties, a person who does everything to make you as comfortable as possible in his chair, as a big, tall monster compared to whom Afghanistan seems nothing.. sheer nonsense, but at that moment when I uttered it, it seemed as real as hell itself that was going on inside of me. Nothing strange happened, I didn't freak out, I didn't die as you can obviously see or go mad, my dentist shrunk back to his usual shape and looks, but it didn't chase away my fear.
Right now I can only step out of my building to reach the woods outside and feed two wonderful stray dogs I love so much, but even this makes me pretty uncomfortable. We panic disorder sufferers ask a lot of what if questions and when anxious, they can get some really grotesque prospective. Tonight I asked my mom - Mom, what if I freak out and do something bad to the dogs.. I would never ever do such a thing, but hey just what if.. My mom doesn't understand this condition at all but has a lot of patience with listening to my dreadful scenarios and does her best to help. Sometimes her words make me even worse, but sometimes they do help. She said - well, don't worry, if you DO finally freak out after all these months and attack them, I'll clap you with something before they get a chance to bite you, so they'll be fine. :) Imagining her clapping me on my head started a long, anxiety free laughter. I just hope it'll last long enough to put me peacefully to sleep.
Take care and try your best not to lose hope..
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