this is the first time i have written about my own journey with anxiety. i was challenged with the assignment to write about how it felt inside my body so the last paragraph i typed with my eyes closed. this blog is being blogged from Coffee Bar in SF.
great food, coffee, and they let you plug in your computer and work which is becoming a rarity in this city.
Out of oxygen. The first time I was out of oxygen I wasn’t on the bottom of the pool swimming scavenging around. It wasn’t from a race of the circular track or the windy dirt paths of cross-country. It wasn’t from the hike up the hills at summer camp. I was out of oxygen on my bed partially out of the bed sheets and comforters and it was early on a Saturday morning. I had just finished college. Late into Friday had sneaked into Saturday and I lie there out of oxygen. The knocking and running and perfectionism are now in my chest, shaking me from the inside out. I am out of oxygen. I am out of breath. I can’t breath. I feel as if I am dying. Dying. My friend had awoken me. Awoken me from a deep sleep and I can’t breathe-just shake. She clutches onto me as the glass jar of anxiety has found a resting spot on my head and my chest and the jar is moving down, toward my belly, but I am pushing it back up not with my hands but my mind. I am out of oxygen. I am out of time. I am out. I am out of the constant motion. Glass jar of panic it had always been there, I had carried with me in my purse but now it had grown too big to hold and it was sucking me down with it. It’s not like Sylvia’s jar- she couldn’t breathe for a different reason. But the not breathing all the same.
Out of oxygen. My friend is talking in a calm way and as I listen I feel like I am above watching in ER sitcom or flashback of someone’s life. Her words are slow and kind of like the peanuts characters. Kaaatttee, youuuu arrre havvvving a panicccc attttack. The rhythm of her voice reverberates against the jar. I hear her, but it’s muffled. I feel her, but it’s removed. I am out of oxygen. The jar is drowning her out. Drowning me out. I don’t want to drown. So I do what I can and cry, cry hard fast tears that had been buried inside of me and so foreign and such family that they must come out. The crying becomes hysterical harder, harder until the jar has lifted and I could breath again. I wasn’t out of oxygen. Anymore. The tears collected and grew stronger with each that fell until the tide had lifted it away. Away to the ground. But it was still with me. Still with me then. Still with me now.
The one thing I couldn’t say was how it felt. Felt inside. The rapidness of quick fire questions in a deep pool while trying to run. The quickness and slowness felt in succession. The ability to watch from above as I ran quickly on the hamster to wheel to nowhere. I am exhausted. Out of oxygen. Out of control. My mind ping pongs and quebert jumps to fear to panic to fear to I’m dying to breath to make this stop just make this stop. Make this stop. Making it all stop. I wanted to the tightness ball of rubber bands to stop bouncing in my chest and my stomach. I wanted to breathe. I wanted to know I wasn’t going to die. Die in that moment. I had dreamed of many thing. Many things I have been. But the quickness of the train, this train of panic not sure how I got on or where or where I was going or if I was packed or if I have someone with me. I felt alone. Alone. Out of oxygen. Out of the control. Panicking. Breathing. Breathe. The tears had already fallen. The breath. The breath beginning at the bottom of my belly my compass of my heart and moving up first too rapid and then slowly lifting through my ribs rising up to my throat, the water to the top of the drain. The safety of the rubber ducky of the bath bounces moves back and forth again floating again. I can breathe. I can breathe.
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