Don't Panic

      Bravery comes in all different shapes and sizes, whether it’s standing up to your overbearing mother-in-law, becoming a fire fighter, or just letting people know that you pee in the shower and that you secretly delight in singing Celine Dion’s, My Heart Will Go On at the top of your lungs while driving to your therapist’s office.  Basically, just being real—being yourself, and letting people see you, warts and all.


         I think that this is something that we all strive towards in one area of our lives or another.  Nobody wants to be a coward.  And while I’m probably not brave enough to rescue a cat from a burning building (I’m definitely not, and would probably die of anaphylactic shock from cat dander before I would from smoke inhalation or engulfing flames), I am brave enough to put it all out there—to be real.  I consider this bravery because I am well aware that in either circumstance I am likely to get burned.  Also, because I am a lot like Bill Murray’s character in “What About Bob?”…I’m afraid of everything.

         So this is my blog, my stories; it is me showing you my skeletons whether or not you show me yours.  Hopefully it will make you self-proclaimed crazies feel less alone, have a hearty little chuckle, or at the very least feel sorry for me:)  Let’s get real!  My first entry is on anxiety.  Thanks for reading!

DON'T PANIC

          At around three o’ clock in the morning, a woman with long, shiny, lustrous waves of hair and perfect gleaming white teeth comes on the television screen. At first, I’m not sure if it’s a commercial for shampoo or toothpaste but it doesn’t really matter. She makes me instantly aware of the popcorn kernels protruding from my gums and the overall feeling of dirt and butter on my face, suffocating my pores. And for that, I immediately hate her beautiful guts. But she is not a model or a paid actor. She is a woman who knows what it is like to suffer from depression and anxiety. She’s been there, she understands, and with three easy payments of $19.95, she can help.

        I thought back on some of the moments when either I or some of the people I know were in the throws of severe anxiety and panic attacks--all of which ended in the comforts of the emergency room. Then I imagined this woman being there, calm and collected in freshly pressed slacks saying, “I know. It’s okay. I’ve been through this; trust me.” Somehow I doubted it.

         My memory took me to the most recent attack which happened at my mother’s house. I was standing in her kitchen, coughing. It was the kind of cough that rattles in your chest like a caged monkey and is accompanied by excessive green phlegm. And, although I was covering my mouth, this angered my mother deeply. She did not get flooded with worry or concern over seeing her youngest daughter ill; she only saw germs, and was therefore flooded with anxiety. She said, “Jesus Christ, Almighty.” and looked wide-eyed around the room as if she had microscopic vision and could see the germs floating through the air, landing on every surface of the room, taking nose dives into the toaster, canoodling with the apples, and playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie on the stove top. In her mind, her kitchen had suddenly become an amusement park for my germs. She shuffled over to the cabinet and frantically searched for something I could take. She found a bottle of antibiotics and threw it at me. “But mom, these expired three years ago. And what are they, anyway?”

“The expiration date doesn’t matter. They’ll work, trust me. I never took them because I’m allergic. You’ll be fine! Here. Let me smell them.” My mother is allergic to every single medication on the market--especially if it’s holistic; most especially if it’s a placebo.

I took the pills home with me, swallowed one with a cup of coffee, and laid down for a nap. An hour later, I had a bunch of messages on my phone from my mother; it was an emergency. I entered the house to find her dragging her butt across the floor like a dog with worms and scratching furiously at her hands and neck. It must’ve been a reaction from the powder she sniffed in that bottle of penicillin. We drove to the emergency with her head hanging out of the window, taking in gulps of air to expand her closing throat. When the nurse offered her a Valium, she objected, insisting she was allergic.

          Anxiety and panic disorder runs rampant in my family. My older brother used to work for the trash company. After I picked him up from the hospital, he retold his horror story as best as any heavily sedated person could. He was standing on the back of the truck, one arm outstretched, holding on like Gene Kelley holds on to a lamp post, when the scent of soiled diapers mixed with the meatball sub he had for lunch, mixed with his self-loathing over being a trash man started to get to him and he felt a tightening in his chest. He became short of breath and the sudden tingling and numbness in his arms made it nearly impossible to hold on. When the truck pulled into a neighborhood and stopped, he jumped into the passenger’s seat and told the driver he was having a heart attack. “But, Mike, who’s gonna empty the trash? Fuck. Shit. Okay, let’s get you to a hospital, man.” I imagined the woman from the commercial having an anxiety attack over her full, stinky garbage can still sitting at the curb in front of her house.

           I tried comforting my brother by telling him about my own psychosomatic episode. I went on a date with a guy I met online. I took him to a party where I knew all my friends were so that I could avoid the whole one-on-one, getting to know you awkwardness and so that my friends could judge him mercilessly for me--which is exactly what they did. They each pulled me aside privately and said, “This is not the guy for you.” and, “I don’t know. There’s something about him I just can’t put my finger on…” and, “You know what? He reminds me of a date rapist.” So naturally, due to my apparent curiosity of the affect of roofies, I agreed to go out with him again. On our second date, we went out to eat at a fancy restaurant where they serve sorbet as their first course to cleanse the palate. Somewhere along our excruciatingly long meal, I excused myself and went to the ladies room. While squatting over the toilette, my friends comments started to pop into my head. I returned to the table and took a huge gulp of my red wine to calm my nerves and suddenly felt as if someone had just placed a lamp shade over my head. “Did it just get darker in here?”

“Ugh, no…I don’t think so. Are you alright? Your face just turned pure white.” That was it for me. How could I be so stupid to go to the bathroom and leave my drink here with him to be tampered with? I started screaming for the check and pounding my fist on the table, upsetting the cheerful centerpiece, the gold plated utensils jumping and falling to the floor like they were trying to commit suicide. “No, I am NOT okay. And should I be? Huh? Should I?! You bastard!” My brother shook his head feeling sorry for the poor guy. “Man,” he said, “and I thought I was crazy.”

         Then I wondered if this woman’s anxiety and depression ever escalated to the point my best friends’ had. A few years ago, she was sitting in traffic, the summer heat hissing loudly in her ears, the smell of exhaust nauseating her, when it dawned on her that she had completely forgotten which pedal was the gas and which was the brake. This was almost as dangerous as Russian roulette. Forgetting something like this must be some kind of serious brain malfunction; perhaps a tumor. By some sort of miracle, she managed to pull the car into the parking lot of a lawyer’s office. Convinced that these were her last moments on earth, she flung the car door open and fell out of her seat onto the scorching black asphalt. Getting on all fours, she started to crawl towards the doors of the office, the heat rising from the ground creating a cruel mirage of the building ahead. She swung the door open and drug her body over to the water cooler in the corner. “I’m having a stroke! Someone! Call an ambulance!” When she arrived at the hospital, the doctor asked her why, at 22 years old, did she think she was experiencing a stroke. It was because she was a smoker and on birth control pills; a very lethal combination.

         Now, I really hate to be such a harsh critic of three a.m. infomercials, and I’d like to believe that this woman had suffered miserably, because then, maybe I’d feel a little less alone in this world. But I do have my friends and family, and after all, that’s what friends are for.