My Thoughts

It's Real Now.

It was the middle of seventh grade. School was rough, home was even worse, and most people were stressed 24/7. It was a time when we had to start thinking about the future, the rest of our lives played out in a single moment. The whole thing seemed premature and scared me out of my wits. It was also around the time my grandmother got sick. It was the later stages of dementia, and I had already begun to fade from her mind. She had moved in with us earlier that year, and just like that I moved into the attic, and she took the only haven I had. Since I was the only one without sports or work, I was thrust the responsibility of being her caregiver. As more and more time passed, she became more and more aggressive. Now, it wasn't her fault, she simply didn't know who I was and was afraid, it was all part of the disease eating at her mind. But it stirred something inside my own. Fear.

Then, one day in class it all came crashing down at once. It was just like any other period, the teacher reminding us of some pointless lesson we'd soon forget, but in a single instant the combined stress of school and home became too much for me to handle. For reasons I couldn't explain, I became hyper aware of everything that was happening around me, as if at any second it would be the end of all ends. I started freaking out right there in class, hyperventilating, and yes, crying, and had to be taken to the nurse's office. My father picked me up early from school mildly concerned, but mostly annoyed he had to leave work early.

When I got home, I clung to my parents like I was an infant all over again. It didn't matter where I was, I would just start to freak out or panic if they weren't there and sometimes, even if they were. I could be sitting at the table eating breakfast, and my parents would get up to drink their coffee in the living room and watch the news, but the second they were out of my sight it felt like the earth was trying to rise up and swallow me alive. I would abandon all rationale, along with my breakfast, and sprint into the living room with them. Every moment was the same, I had to see them, or I would lose it all over again.

It was the most overwhelming feeling I'd ever experienced, like I'd been plunged into these cold, yet very bright seas of fear. Waves of panic pushing me below to the depths of my imagination, where it all felt so real and all the more terrifying. Those depths that were once hidden by a darkness called oblivion were illuminated by an unreasonable terror incomprehensible to those who never gazed into its pits. It drowned and consumed every ounce of courage I possessed. I could barely sleep, getting out of the warmth and safety of my bed was nearly impossible, and eating was another feat entirely. Everything seemed cold and threatening, like I was somehow a target. I was always afraid, of the slightest movement, sound, shadow, whisper, or breath, and nothing could ease that.

After missing a week of school, my mother grew tired of my "childish" behavior and took me to a doctor to find out what was wrong with me. I was diagnosed with social anxiety and anxiety disorder. That drowning feeling that left me petrified of my own reflection and paranoid of my shadow, was called an anxiety attack, and the episode I had experience at school? A panic attack. It was probably one of the most real moments in my life, finding out that there really was something wrong with me, that I wasn't just some normal kid that got freaked out by the future from time to time.

I was told that I'd have to suck it up and be brave, words my older brothers had been telling me since I could understand them. I'd go back to school and do my best to act like everything was normal, at least, that was the plan. I couldn't make it through the first day. Or the second. Or the third. And so, the long process began: wake up in the morning and try to get out of bed, get dressed and brush my teeth, eat something if I could stomach it, go to school and struggle to stay in class. Most days I could only manage to sit through two or three periods. If I got lucky, I made it through lunch. I wasn't very lucky. On particularly bad days I couldn't even get through first period without feeling like my little world was collapsing in on itself.

Then, after two weeks of repeating the same routine, I managed to do something that felt unfathomable. I made it through a whole school day. It wasn't some miraculous shift where I woke up and the birds were chirping, and I was magically "cured". That uneasy feeling remained in the pit of my stomach every second of that day, my eyes frantically searched the clock on the wall, counting the seconds until I could go home and hide. Minute after minute, class after class, I would sit, tapping my pen, my legs shaking in rhythm with the erratic beat trying to breathe through the panic that rose in my chest and spread through me like a wildfire. I shook like a leaf until that final bell rang and echoed down the crowded halls. I barely even noticed that I'd survived the whole day until I was walking home.

It was the first of many full days, and soon I could make it through whole weeks. Eventually, I made a new routine: get up earlier than I needed to, and just breathe until I had to officially start my day, and then take it one step at a time. It's been four years since that feeling emerged, and those burning fears and haunting anxieties still loom over most of what I do. It wasn't the last attack I've experienced, and there will definitely be more as the days, months, and years continue. It's not something I can grow out of, and sometimes it gets the better of me, but it's something I've learned to manage to a point where I can have a relatively normal life and enjoy it. The cold pit keeps me struggling to stay above the surface, always threatening to pull me under, but now I know I can fight back.