Panic

I have panic disorder, which means I sometimes get panic attacks. Panic attacks simply suck. They do not help me function in life or increase the quality of my life.

I was in my 20′s when I had my first panic attack, but I had no idea that’s what was going on. I was at work and I thought I was having a heart attack. I said this to a coworker that I happened to be dating at the time and after work he took me to the emergency room. It turns out I was not having a heart attack, but no other explanation was offered, so I left just being relieved that my heart was okay.

Most of the time I have been and am fine. I don’t seem to get panic attacks during stressful situations when I need to stay calm. They happen for no good reason, usually when I am sleeping. I will go from a very peaceful slumber to being jolted out of bed by panic. Sometimes I can calm myself down, other times I need the help of medication. Sometimes, just knowing that I can take the medication if I need it calms me down.

My first pregnancy was full of panic attacks. Something about the hormones in my body just kept triggering them. I thought I was losing my mind and that I would never be okay again. Turns out this happens to quite a few women. I was lucky to get help.

For the longest I’ve been okay. Sure I have anxiety issues, but I haven’t had a full-blown panic attack until the other night. I’ve been having so many health issues and this is a trigger for me. I woke up in the middle of the night freaking out and ready to run sprints up and down my hallway.

The thing that really sucks about panic attacks is that just thinking about them can trigger them. The longer I go without having them, the better I do. Since I just recently had one, I find myself terrified of having another one, which makes my chest tighten and so on and so forth. The last few days I have been tip toeing around myself.

I know I will get through this. I have tools, skills, strategies, medicine, and support. Still it sucks. It sucks for me and it sucks for my husband. It is hard for someone that does not have these issues to be understanding of someone that does. He is great and helps me every time, but I can see how draining it is for him and how little sense it makes. Things that he can just shake off, I can not. I can not soothe myself in the same way that he does. I can not reason it away.

I know he loves me just the way that I am, but sometimes I wish I didn’t come with so many issues. I am not feeling sorry for myself or my husband, I am just acknowledging that we face a challenge. I am acknowledging that I am not the only one affected by my disorder.

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I live on the brink of panic. I hate it. I do things to protect myself like not watch the news or stay away from certain forms of entertainment, but I have to live, I have to exist in this world and this world makes me panic. There are reasons for it. I’ve been mugged at gunpoint and because of it, I know what I’m made of. Years later I saw the man who was to become my husband get beat up after he helped a woman that was getting mugged because it appears that no good deed goes unpunished.

Even as I write this I feel my chest tighten with a surge of adrenaline spiked with fear; it creeps up from my chest to the back of my throat where I can taste it and it makes me choke.

Last night, I saw the news, not all of it, but something that isn’t even that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, BUT now I feel afraid. I want to hide.

So what was the story that set me off? It’s embarrassing. In San Francisco people with iPhones are getting jacked for their phones. People on the street or public transit talking, texting, or doing whatever on their iPhones are having them stolen. I know this sounds like such an inconsequential thing, but I already have no sense of safety.

Today, I left the house and I just wanted to cry because now in addition to all my other fears I was afraid to use my friggin’ phone to call my husband or to take a picture of my daughter at the park.

I’m tired of being afraid. I feel like I’ve made so much progress, there was a time when I could not be outside without being terrified. I don’t feel that way anymore, but every once in awhile something triggers this terror that’s always underneath the surface, that has become so much a part of who I am that I don’t remember what it was like to be me without it; it’s like the Loch Ness monster of me.

I don’t want to be afraid to use my phone. I’m so angry that someone stole my sense of safety. I’m tired of telling myself to breath, I’m tired of looking for plans of escape. I just want to take my daughter to the park and take a picture of her with my damn phone and send it to my husband because I am so friggin’ proud that she is going down the big curly slide all by herself, but some stupid son of a b@tch infected me with this horrid sense of pending danger and then these other bastards come along and reinforce the fact that I am not ever safe!