Thursday, 400 mg.
Friday, 300 mg.
Saturday, 200 mg.
Sunday, 100 mg.
Celexa 10 mg
will be better than Serzone,
my new therapist says.
We start low
and I work my way up again.
The first week I take 10 mg.
The second week I take 20 mg.
The week after that 30 mg.
My therapist cuts me off at 40 mg.
Ativan 0.5 mg
is sitting in a bottle in my room,
is floating in my wallet,
is crumbling in the back pocket of my jeans.
My therapist prescribed it
for when the attacks become unbearable,
but I don’t want to take it.
I’m scared I will become dependent
and end up worse off than I am now,
but I keep it with me
just in case.
I have the dream again,
this time with Saran Wrap.
I am standing in front of a deli counter
when I realize I have a piece of Saran Wrap in my mouth.
I begin to pull it out.
I feel it unraveling
from somewhere inside my stomach
and dragging up my throat
and out my mouth.
I’m terrified I’m pulling out my intestines.
My parents have taken control of my life.
When I am not at work
my parents lead me around
like a sick animal.
I never go out on the weekends
with friends anymore.
I stay home and watch TV,
but never the news—
it hurts too much.
I don’t bother to call my friends back—
not even Claire.
There is nothing to say.
My mother says, “Get up,
we’re going to a flute concert.”
I don’t want to go to a flute concert.
I don’t want to leave the house.
I don’t want to sit in a room full of people
in the dark
and have to be quiet.
But I do not have it in me to protest.
I get dressed
and we go
and I cry.
My mother says, “Get up,
put on a skirt,
we are going to temple.”
I don’t want to go to temple
and sit quietly and pray.
But I do not have it in me to protest.
At temple I sit next to my mother
with a prayer book closed in my lap
and I cry.
I feel like a mental patient
on leave from the home.
It’s strange.
I spent most of the last few years
trying to get out of going places with my parents,
but now I don’t mind our outings.
Now it is comforting.
Now it is safe.
The therapist says I should keep a log
of when I have panic attacks.
He wants me to write down
where I was, what I was thinking
just before and during the attack,
and how long it lasted.
I don’t like this idea.
It is too much focus
on something I am trying to forget.
I am afraid
that this attention to detail
will only fuel my
anxiety.
I hate that I want to open up
my mouth and empty the bottle of Celexa
down my throat
and feel soft and quiet.
I’m not talking about suicide.
I just wish I were how I was before—
how I was my senior year in high school
when I didn’t care
who liked me and who didn’t,
how I was finally free.
Now I feel more bound than ever—
bound by this disease,
bound to repeat the behaviors
and thoughts
that are killing me.
I am the crazy friend.
Rebecca calls to check up on me
and to see if she should visit.
I am the patient
and she wants to know the visiting hours.
That’s how bad this is—she’ll
even come to Queens.
I don’t want to see anyone.
I just want to sit at home
and watch TV with my sister
and have my parents pour wine for me at dinner.
My therapist and I do breath work.
We stare at each other
from matching green leather chairs.
I shut my eyes and he counts slowly for me.
“Breathe in,
two,
three.
Breathe out,
two,
three.”
I try to focus
on filling my chest up with air
and instead of sucking air in,
I let my stomach balloon out.
I imagine my diaphragm
moving up and down,
like how you shake out a sheet
before you fold it.
“In,
two,
three.
Out,
two,
three.”
Relaxing,
feeling
only
my
breath.
Only
hearing
his
voice.
I wonder what my life would be like
if I’d never had anxiety disorder.
At first I think, shit,
I’d be Miss America.
I’d be the happiest person
with the brightest smile on the face of the earth.
But the more I think about it,
the more scary life without panic seems.
My life has been governed by anxiety
for the last five years.
It fills up my time.
The practice of doing nothing—
of staring at walls and letting my mind go—
is torture.
I don’t know how to live like that.
I only know how to live like this—
with this feeling in my stomach.
But this is no way to live—
fearing everything,
being scared to be me,
to be happy,
to feel pain.
There are so few things left inside me
besides fear.
The thought of having to go back to work—
having to go back out there,
knowing that this is my life,
that I am not happy,
that I expect more,
that I want more,
makes me sick.
When I have a panic attack
the voice in my head says
anything can happen.
I will go insane,
I will die,
I will start screaming,
I will piss all over myself.
I try to tell myself that that voice isn’t real,
but it’s hard.
The voice is very convincing.
I need to find a voice that is stronger—
one that is so rational
that it will cancel the other one out.
What does it take to believe
that I am going to make it?
Whose voice is good enough?
Is my own?
I write a note to myself,
put it in my wallet
and hope.
Where you are
and what you are doing
is something you have done
dozens of times before
without having any problems.
Recognize that you are going to g
et out of this—
that you always get out of this,
that you are going to live,
that you won’t go crazy.
I am telling you that you will live,
because you always live,
because you are strong
and beautiful.
The therapist and I play a new game.
When I say, “I thought I was going to have a panic attack,”
he says, “So what if you did?”
He is mentally prodding me
from across the room.
I say, “It would suck
and I would think I was going crazy
and I would feel like I couldn’t breathe.”
“And…?” he asks.
I say, “I might pass out.”
“And…?”
I already see where this is going.
It’s a trap.
He is letting me use my words
against myself.
I say, “I’d wake up.”
I hate this game.
I dream that I have cancer.
I go to the gynecologist
and he tells me that I have a week to live.
I don’t understand.
I feel fine.
I have no symptoms.
How could I be carrying around
that much rot and disease
in my uterus and not even know?
I’m too young, I think.
I haven’t done anything yet.
Later in the dream
things get bad quickly.
My parents and sister
rush me to the hospital
because I’m pissing blood.
I’m going to have surgery,
but the doctors don’t think
I have much of a chance.
I lie on a table, under anesthesia.
My body is cold, but my mind is awake.
My father is preparing me for surgery,
but it feels more like for burial.
I am ashamed to be naked in front of him,
but he carefully washes my body
and cleans under my nails
and I scream for him inside my head.
All I can think is, I told you so.
I told you that my panic was real.
I told you that things like this happen.
I have a theory,
I tell my therapist while we talk about
my irrational fears regarding illness
and other catastrophes.
I call it the Post-it theory.
For every fucked-up thing that happens
I make a mental note.
There is a Post-it in my brain
for when Joelle died of meningitis.
There is a Post-it for when
my mother’s friend had a brain tumor.
There are Post-its
based on things I hear in the news
and stories friends tell me.
If I have a bad headache,
part of me says, take some aspirin,
have some tea, take a nap.
But there is another part of me,
the part with all those Post-its lined up,
that says, no,
this is not a headache,
this is something larger,
something strange,
something that will kill you.
I try to tell myself,
what are the chances?
I am a healthy girl.
But those Post-its remind me
that things can happen—
that they do happen.
It is so hard to know
this kind of fear—
this level of irrationality—
because it opens all doors.
It finds the spiders in the corners
of every room—
the ones that are there
and the ones that aren’t.
But shouldn’t a limitless possibility of bad
open the spectrum
for a limitless possibility of good?
There are five days
between me and my last attack.
I feel like I am in AA.
I am counting the days,
hoping to get enough space
to feel like a different person,
a normal person.
Being at work has helped
keep me busy, occupied
long enough to forget how bad it was
a week ago,
how bad it was
a year ago.
Even though I am out of the hole,
I can still feel it.
I am a little quieter,
a little more cautious,
a little less made up,
and I wonder when it will hit again.
Each day without fear is a triumph.
The more space I can put between
myself and the last attack,
the stronger I feel.
I am proud of the distance,
but it makes me sick to think about it—
how it is still there,
how it has been there for so long,
how I am affected.
I wonder when I will be free,
when there will be days without pain,
but all this is dependent on me working hard
and telling the truth
and not being scared anymore.
I have moved out of the incredibly sad place
that I’ve been in for months.
It still creeps up on me,
but for the most part
it is gone.
It would seem that losing the sadness
would be a good thing,
but it has been replaced by nothing—
a quiet acceptance of this boring,
everyday life.
I think it’s even worse
than being miserable.
At least miserable is active.
Today is my twenty-second birthday
and things don’t seem so bad.
I just dyed my hair red
and I am having a party
at a bar called Double Happiness.
I feel better
and I wonder if it’s because of the new meds,
or because of the new therapist.
Or maybe this is just another remission.
But I don’t really care why.
All I care about is that things are better.
I take the train into the city
and a touch of anxiety comes over me.
What if no one shows up?
What if I have a panic attack and want to leave?
I take a few deep breaths
and remind myself that tonight is going to be fun
and it calms me.
At the bar it is hard to believe
that all these people are my friends.
Person after person filters in
as I preside at a table in the back.
I’ve never felt like this before.
I am at the center of attention,
and not because I am having a panic attack
or passing out at a concert.
It’s just me
and the people I care about most.
Rebecca, Claire, Robyn, and Rachel are here.
Audrey drove in from Rhode Island.
A bunch of other kids from school came
and some kids I grew up with.
That guy from my poetry class is here,
flirting, vying for my attention,
and it is wonderful.
The only people missing are my sister
who is away on business
and Nate and Jason,
but that’s not new.
It’s after three A.M. when the snow starts to fall.
By the time Audrey and I get to her car
the snow is coming down even harder.
As soon as Audrey turns the key in the ignition,
Edith Piaf bla
res from the stereo.
I laugh at Audrey as we pull away,
and laugh even harder
when the car starts thumping down Mott Street.
We have a flat tire.
It’s late, but it doesn’t matter.
I told my parents not to expect me before 4 A.M.
and for once they didn’t seem to mind.
At a gas station, Audrey and I wait
and watch the snow fall
as an attendant puts on the spare.
I don’t mind the cold—it’s
all part of the adventure.
Audrey and I head home in the blizzard,
going thirty miles an hour on the Long Island Expressway,
laughing and listening to Edith Piaf a little too loud,
and it doesn’t matter
that I don’t understand a word she’s saying.
I went to yoga today.
I moved slowly
and did things carefully
and made sure to breathe.
It feels good to do something
alone, that is just for me.
It’s New Year’s Day.
My resolutions are
to actively work at finding happiness,
to be healthier,
more flexible,
more relaxed in my own skin—
comfortable, soft.
I feel stronger.
I am farther from the panic,
but I am still stuck
in my old patterns.
I wait for the clock
to strike a new hour
so I can leave parties
and do not check my coat
just in case I need to make a quick escape.
I’ve built myself safety nets,
but they bind me in a web.
I am in a house.
I am in one room
and my anxiety is in another.
It’s close.
I can feel it.
I can go to it.
But I won’t.
Author’s Note
Everyone knows what it’s like to feel anxious.
Anxiety and fear are important—and normal—parts of our lives. Anxiety can give us the kick we need to study late into the night, stay alert in what could be a dangerous situation, and keep us on our toes during a presentation. In short, it helps us cope. But this normally helpful emotion can do the exact opposite for people with an anxiety disorder. It can keep them from facing everyday problems or situations and even paralyze them with fear.
If you have an anxiety disorder, or any other type of problem that is making your life unmanageable, know that you are not alone. According to a report by the United States Surgeon General, anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric illnesses—more than 19 million American adults and more than one in ten children and adolescents have an anxiety disorder.
Unfortunately, many young people are not getting the help they need. If you are having a hard time with anxiety, or anything else, you don’t need to be ashamed—you need to get help. Talk to a parent, teacher, school counselor, or friend. Below are some resources you can find on the Internet, including information about “live” and online support groups for people of all ages.
I Don't Want to Be Crazy Page 13