Sometimes, I walk around with a sly, secret smile. "I know something you don't know." I wonder why I don't get smacked silly. I'm laughing because nobody knows - nobody can tell.
I can hide how scared I am.
It's easy, in a worrisome sort of way. A certain little flaunt, a certain little twinkle in the eye and "Oh god oh god I'm scared," comes off as a flirty bravado.
Lately I've been scared all the time.
It started, as many things do, with That Crazy Bastard, my shrink. He looked at me and furrowed his crinkled, wise-man brow and told me I must search out the things that scared me. That I must create them.
I hate That Crazy Bastard.
It's called Interoceptive Exposure, and it's a right bitch. What you do is, in a safe environment, create the feelings of panic. Call them up at will, plunge yourself into the brink on fucking purpose. Spin around in a chair until you feel dizzy and nauseated, run around until your heart is racing, stare at a wall until you're numb, until you can't feel anything anymore. Interoceptive Exposure. I ran into it by accident once; got mildly carsick and had a panic attack because it reminded me of the fear.
This is what anxiety feels like. It's my new mantra. It's an acceptance rather than a fight: instead of calm down oh god calm down relax relax it's okay ohgod calm down, you just say Yes. Yes, this is what anxiety feels like. My pulse is racing, my hands are shaky, I'm sick to my stomach, and it's not going to hurt me. It's anxiety; this is what anxiety feels like.
I fucking hate it.
"I want to be done!" I keep shouting, "I want to be better!" But slowly I realize that I'm never going to get better. Not ever, not EVER. I can learn to live with the fear, but that's the best I can do.
I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life.
So I'm not going to let it rule me.
Every day, every single fucking day I have to go and find the scariest, most anxious thing, and kick it in the balls. I went to a party. I started recording my anxiety. I talk to people who I haven't talked to in a while, even though I think they'll be mad at me. I trusted someone.
I wrote this.
Yeah....
ReplyDeleteMy crazy bastard wants to start setting off flashbacks in therapy, so he can talk to the girl in the house. I think they're sadistic little fuckers, aren't they?
From someone who's had them all of her life...
You're right. They'll never go away. However, you don't have to have them every day. You'll go a day and then you'll go to bed and then you'll wake up the next morning and think, I didn't panic yesterday! Then you'll panic. The next day you'll panic. Then you'll make it through another day without one and you'll notice it and panic, but it'll take a little longer, or the panic will be a little less, or a little shorter.
Eventually, you'll learn to go a week without one. Then you'll go long enough that when you have one, it freaks you out cuz you forgot how bad they were. And you'll go to the ER cuz clearly something is wrong, and they'll remind you that it's a panic attack. And then you'll enter a new wave of them, becoming regularly scared of them again.
But you'll learn to appreciate the down times. The normal feelings. You'll find balance. There really IS good to counter the bad.