thoughts
I should be in Portland, Oregon right now. A few months ago, I was one of four students from my university chosen to attend the Willamette Writers Conference. To say I was excited is an understatement. A career in writing depends on connections almost as heavily as it relies on talent, so this was my chance to finally meet people who could help me achieve what I’ve spent my whole life working toward.
Then they told me how we were getting to Portland. Travelling by airplane has never particularly appealed to me, which is why I’d never flown before. I don’t like small spaces, I can’t handle being too close to the people around me, and I still get sick on an almost daily basis, which is not something you want to happen when you’re not allowed to get out of your seat for long periods of time. (Notice that at no point do I mention being worried about the plane crashing. Because I wasn’t worried about that. At all. Contrary to the belief of literally everyone I mentioned my anxiety to, I never once entertained the possibility of the plane crashing.) I lobbied to turn this into a road trip, even volunteering to do the majority of the driving, but I was shot down every time. The others always thought I was kidding. After all, who in their right mind would suggest driving over 3000 miles round trip? Notice the word choice there: “right mind” is not necessarily a phrase that I use to describe how my brain works. I even considered just driving there by myself. Unfortunately, the way my car has been acting lately, I’m not sure it would’ve made it across the first state lines. Fast forward to the day of our departure: August 11. We were supposed to take off at 5:55 p.m. So I had a full day for my anxiety to build up. Awesome. I somehow managed to not get sick in the hours leading up to the trip, so I was feeling pretty confident that things were actually going to go well. I arrived at our small, local airport at the designated time. We checked in and made it through security with no problems. So far, everything was running smoothly. We boarded the plane, I took my seat next to the professor who was taking us on the trip, and two other students sat behind us (the fourth student was already in Portland, awaiting our arrival). Take-off was easy; it felt a little like being on a roller coaster, which I’m not a huge fan of, but it was fine. I glanced out the window a few times, quickly discovering that my state is far prettier from above. I settled back in my seat. This trip was going to be fine. Then it happened. We’d been in the air for about ten minutes when the back of my neck started to get hot. Knowing my body the way I do, I immediately recognized this as a sign that I was going to pass out within the next 45 seconds. I tried to wiggle down in my seat so I wouldn’t fall forward when I fainted, only to discover I couldn’t move. The rest of my body was gradually heating up as my vision blurred. Sure that my 45-second grace period was long past, I wondered how I was still conscious. As I tried to blink away the haze that had settled in front of my eyes, my head suddenly felt as though it was submerged under water. A painful pressure settled in my ears, surrounding me with a suffocating silence, undercut by only a dull roar. Despite having frequent panic attacks, this was different. I’d never experienced one in public before, and I’d never felt paralyzed like this in the middle of an attack. Attempting to drag myself out of this, I tried to take a deep breath. Instead of pulling air into my lungs, though, I felt a weight collapse into my chest. No matter how hard I tried to breathe, I couldn’t seem to get my lungs to cooperate. Rivers of ice slid into the crevices of my brain, creating pools of pain that started behind my eyes and slowly overtook the rest of my head. Steel fingers laced between my ribs and corseted them together until my lungs and heart were smashed against my spine. Apparently we hit a little turbulence before landing. I didn’t notice. My stomach did, of course. My stomach notices everything. I have no idea how long this attack lasted, but our flight was only 50 minutes, so I assume it was around half an hour. When we finally landed in Denver, I stumbled off behind the rest of my group, not entirely sure what was going on. I gripped my suitcase in a hand that had gone completely numb, glancing down every few minutes to make sure I hadn’t released my white-knuckle grip on the handle. I followed my group slowly through the airport, my mind still not quite cleared of the fog. I had no idea where we were headed; I just tried to focus on the backs of their heads so I wouldn’t be left behind. As we worked our way through the airport, we passed a gauntlet of smells, each one more vomitous than the last. Don’t ask what restaurants they had; I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t even notice they had a bookstore - A BOOKSTORE, PEOPLE! - until I was wandering around on my own later. When we finally reached our gate, the other two students headed off to find a bathroom. My professor tried to say something to me, but her voice was trying to reach me through a tunnel and I couldn’t make out the words. Instead, I started crying. In public. For those of you who don’t know me, that is not something I do. Ever. I’ve fainted in public. I’ve puked in public. I’ve done plenty of embarrassing things in public, but crying is not one of them. While trying to swallow down another sob, I told her that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get on another plane, especially knowing that in a few days I’d have to do this trip all over again. She tried to convince me that this plane was bigger; therefore, the ride would be better, but considering that I was still trying to remember how to breathe like a normal human being, I wasn’t exactly in a position to believe her. What I couldn’t explain at the time was that it wasn’t the plane itself that incited my attack. After all, the ride had been fairly uneventful. Nothing went wrong that should have caused me to freak out. I just felt like I had no control over anything and that is not a position with which I am comfortable. Honestly, it was probably the crying in public that convinced her I was serious about my inability to get on the plane. She reluctantly agreed to let me leave the group, rent a car, and drive myself the five hours home. I could tell she didn’t want to leave me there alone, but their plane was boarding, and she had to lead a session first thing the next morning, so she didn’t have much choice. As soon as my professor and the other two students left, I bolted for the nearest bathroom and threw up what little food I’d managed to choke down earlier in the day. After my stomach was under control a little, I made my way back through the airport to ground transportation so I could talk to someone about renting a car. By this point, I’d switched my suitcase from my completely numb right hand to my completely numb left hand. At ground transportation, the lady informed me that the rental car representatives no longer stay at the airport. I would have to call one of the companies, make a reservation, and then take a shuttle to an off-site location where I could pick up the car. I was looking up the number for Hertz when I was hit with a horrible realization: I only had $150 in my account. I hadn’t planned to spend any money on Thursday, and my paycheck would be directly deposited into my account on Friday morning, so I hadn’t thought to worry about it before. I had no idea how much it would cost to rent a car, plus the cost of gas on the way home and anything else I might need. So I called my mom. This is the third time I’ve called my mom crying. The first was in junior high when I got sick at camp and she had to come get me (luckily it was only an hour away), and the second was a few years ago when I got in a car accident in Omaha (which is also about five hours away, but fortunately my car was still functional after getting t-boned and I could still drive home). I tried my best to explain what had happened, but I don’t know how much she understood between all of my sniffling and hiccupping. She finally asked if I was somewhere I could calm down and breathe and I told her I had found a somewhat-deserted section of the airport. She told me to just sit and relax, she’d figure something out, and then she’d call me back. Within about a minute of hanging up with my mom, one of my friends called me. My professor had called her and filled her in on what happened, so she was checking to make sure I wasn’t huddled in a corner somewhere freaking out. As someone who has suffered her fair share of panic attacks, she understood what I’d experienced, and for that I was grateful. It’s impossible to truly understand what it’s like to be trapped inside a cage of anxiety if you’ve never been there yourself. I talked to her for a few minutes, but quickly ducked out of the conversation because I wanted to get my crying under control before too many people noticed me sitting there. After hanging up with her, I went and threw up again. On my way back to my seat, my mom called back and said that she and my aunt were going to drive out to Denver and pick me up. I kept trying to apologize to her, but she finally cut me off, saying, “Think about who you inherited this from. I get it. It’s not your fault.” This, of course, started me crying all over again. She promised to call when they got close, and then hung up. By now, the feeling was finally returning to my hands, causing them to shake almost uncontrollably. But, my stomach being what it is, didn’t care that my hands were busy, and forced me to half-drag my suitcase back to the bathroom so I could dry heave for a few minutes. This time all that came up was a little bit of blood, which led me to realize that at some point I’d bitten a small chunk out of the inside of my right cheek. With my body now somewhat back to normal, I settled in to wait for my mom and aunt to make the five-hour trip to Denver to pick me up. The first few times I heard another plane take off my chest tightened and I had to remind myself to breathe, but eventually the planes just became additional background noise that I learned to ignore. I tried to read, but the headache that had started on the plane made it difficult to focus on the words. I tried to scroll through Facebook and Twitter, but looking at my phone screen for more than a couple minutes at a time made my stomach threaten to rebel all over again. So I hunkered down in my seat and observed the constant activity around me, occasionally texting the friend who’d called me earlier to update her on my mental status. I couldn’t help but hope that something good would come out of this and I would run into a celebrity who had a layover in Denver. No such luck. I was, however, quite entertained by a guy down the row from me who decided to spend his four-hour layover calling every single one of his Tinder matches in an attempt to woo them to the airport for a quick hook-up before his flight left. He wasn’t having much luck either. These hours spent in the airport provided me plenty of time to think, which isn’t necessarily the best thing for me. And during those hours, the guilt started to sink in. Guilt that I’d messed up a trip that had been in the works for months. Guilt that my professor had wasted grant money on my plane ticket and conference registration. Guilt that my professor was now forced to pull her attention away from preparing for her presentation in order to worry about having left me behind. But with the realization that I couldn’t change any of that, humiliation started to take over. Having an emotional breakdown is one thing, but having one in public is significantly worse. I kept replaying the looks on my travelling companions’ faces. The looks that scream, “What is her problem? Why is she acting like that?” I began to wonder what would have happened if I’d given in to the panic in the way I usually do, where I claw at my throat in an attempt to help myself breathe and scream through gritted teeth into my clenched fists and curl up into a ball in the hopes that if I make myself small enough the anxiety will pass through my body more quickly. Would that have clued in my companions to the torture I was suffering? Or would I have come across as simply attention-seeking and overly dramatic? I thought about the fact that, upon returning to school in the coming weeks, I would be confronted by people who assume I was just being a baby and I should have pulled myself together and gotten onto the next plane. But I also reminded myself that there’s nothing I can do about that. So instead of trying to defend myself to those people, I’ll just have to congratulate them on being one of the lucky humans who never experiences paralyzing anxiety. Finally, around one in the morning (Mountain Time), my rescue team arrived. Despite their sketchy sense of direction, my mom and my aunt were the perfect duo to swoop in and save me. As soon as I got in the car, I was fully prepared to start crying again as I apologized, “Sorry you guys had to make this ridiculous trip because I can’t handle my life.” My aunt immediately reminded me that both she and my mom suffer panic attacks and insisted that I not feel bad about what happened. They then proceeded to spend the drive home cheering me up. We finally made it back to my aunt’s house around five in the morning (Central Time), where I choked out one final apology to my mom before falling asleep. This failed trip taught me something incredibly important about myself. I have to start trusting my own instincts, regardless of what other people think. If I had insisted on driving myself instead of flying with the others, I would be in Portland right now, meeting people who could help kick-start my career, or wandering the aisles at Powell’s Books (which, let’s face it, is the real reason I wanted to go). But instead I did what I always do: I let the opinions of others make me doubt myself. I knew from the beginning that my anxiety issues wouldn’t mix well with being trapped in a giant tube in the air, but I allowed myself to believe the people who told me that my fears were ridiculous (this goes back to the whole “you don’t have to worry about the plane crashing” thing, which, again, was never something I was worried about). So from now on, I’m going to listen to myself regarding whether or not I’m comfortable with doing something. Because, let’s face it, it’s almost always the people who don’t deal with anxiety who try to play off others’ fears as infinitesimal, so who in their right mind would let someone else control their decisions? Although, as I mentioned before, “right mind” isn’t exactly something I possess.
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Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
March 2019
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