Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – June 10, 2004
Coming Clean – Panic & Anxiety
Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – June 10, 2004 – I’ve already admitted to being obsessive, compulsive, impatient, anxious, bitchy (okay a bitch), a wee bit neurotic, uptight, anal, the Queen of Rationalization and The Princess of Procrastination. What I haven’t yet addressed is that I am a captive of Panic Disorder. There, I’ve said it. I am plagued by severe anxiety and panic attacks.
My first severe panic attack appeared out of nowhere one day at Towers Department Store in Owen Sound. I was visiting my parents for the week-end and had driven to the store for some reason that escapes my aging memory. I was walking down an aisle (toys I think) behind a woman I knew. I was just about to call out to her to say hello, when I was stricken with a mind-numbing sense of fear.
My heart accelerated into jackhammer status, the ends of my fingers went numb, my face felt as if it was being pricked with pins and needles, and coursing down the right side of my head were, what felt like, little jolts of electricity. I alternated between hot flashes (not the menopausal kind and cold sweats. I stumbled over to the side of the aisle and slid down onto the floor. I was gasping for breath – certain that I was having a combination heart attack and brain aneurysm.
I sat on the floor – dazed, embarrassed and frightened. Fortunately for my beleaguered self-esteem there weren’t any people in my aisle. I struggled to my feet and careened out of the store to my car. I slammed into the front seat and leaned back against the head rest. I was crying, breathless and confused. What had just happened to me? I locked the car doors. Over the next twenty minutes my heart gradually slowed down and the sensations in my body became less severe. Since I was still breathing, I ruled out a heart attack, but was convinced that an erupting brain tumour was percolating deep inside my electric-shock head. I was terrified.
I sat in the car for over an hour, until I felt able to drive home. I went into the house. My mother commented that I looked a bit pale and asked me if I was alright. I lied and said I was just a bit tired and that I wanted to rest for awhile. That lie was the start of my self-imposed incarceration. I told no one what had happened. Not my parents, my doctor or my friends. I actually thought I might be going crazy.
I wondered how I could ask my mother about crazy ancestors or demented relatives, no matter how far removed. “So Mom – does insanity run in our family?” How old was cousin Billy when he wrapped himself in plastic and vaulted over the barrier into the Ontario Legislature and why did uncle Ben lash himself to the back bumper of his best friend’s car? The fact that I didn’t have a cousin Billy or an uncle Ben didn’t allay my fears.
If I’d stopped to think for awhile about my life at the time, I might have suspected an overload of stress. My brother had died four years earlier, I was in a dead-end job that I disliked, my mother was locked into her grief and functioning at half-speed and my father was hanging on by his fingernails. But these thoughts didn’t cross my mind and instead I dismissed my Towers episode as a one-off incident that was probably triggered by fatigue.
Such was not the case and I continued to have panic episodes during my thirties and forties – some minor and others far more severe. When I was with friends, I blamed my “little bouts of anxiety” on over-work, money worries, relationship woes and family crises. That worked well – no one ever asked me about my anxious moments and I never elaborated on my discomfort. I suffered through my extreme panic attacks in private, on my own.
I still had no idea that there was a thing called panic disorder. Heart attacks, brain tumours, paralysis, insanity and other nameless, debilitating diseases were responsible for my lapses into anxiety hell. Slowly, I became less social and more uncomfortable around people, but my ability to function within the boundaries of my fear was never in question. I made excuses, avoided situations that I knew would trigger stress and watched silently as my world became smaller.
I didn’t know anyone else who endured these bouts of lunacy and I was ashamed of this dreadful weakness. I saw it as a flaw in my character. I couldn’t control it and I was afraid that there might be something “really” wrong with me. By the time I was in my late forties I realized that I’d spent the better part of twenty years living in fear.
In 1995 I met my friend Big. She has panic disorder too. The difference is that she didn’t keep her attacks a secret, and has had a support system of family and friends. She is the first person I ever told about this frightening affliction. I was 46 years old at the time, and in that instant, I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. I wasn’t going to have a heart attack and my brain tumour was a figment of my imagination. Better the devil you know, than the one you don’t – and best of all – I wasn’t crazy!
