Antic Panic.
It took me months to feel like writing again. I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I knew that something was. I was frightened all the time. I used to wake up at night shaking all over and in a cold sweat. I often thought I was on the verge of dying. I ought to have recognized the problem because I've dealt often enough with people in the midst of panic attacks, but I couldn't get my head around the fact that it was happening to me? Where did it come from? Why? Nothing had changed. Nothing was wrong. But telling myself what I already knew didn't do a bit of good.
Panic attacks. It took one visit to a doctor, one prescription, and about one week to erase them as if they'd never existed. The doctor said that recurrent attacks of extreme fear, with all the consequent emotional and physiological changes, can alter the brain's chemistry, making it increasingly difficult to attain conscious control.
To complicate matters, I had made myself genuinely ill. Chronic fear made my entire immune system go haywire. In the interim, I was tested for lupus, two types of cancer, and a variety of other possible problems---all the result of stress. But stress about what and from where? I have no answers.
I went on being able to work and to go through the motions of my life, but during the period when it was all happening, all of the things I like or love about my life just made me sad. I felt constantly on the verge of losing it all. I mostly felt numb because I was afraid to feel anything else. Looking back, I was very very lucky because it wasn't so bad that I was paralyzed; I could still do the things I had to do; I could still function. But I've never imagined that I could feel so powerless or so--for lack of a better word---'copeless.' Because though I carried on coping in a way, I thought every moment that I might stop.
I still don't know where it came from or where it went (how could a pill just wipe it all out); I'm just glad it's gone and glad I belong to the class of people with enough money to afford the medical care and the medicine.
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Image drawn by Mr. Tenniel; painted by Damozel!
5:49:18 PM 
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