i'm dying

...but everything's fine

The truth of the matter is, I am blocked. Metaphorically and physically. I mean most of it is my own doing but honestly, that’s beside the point. Or it could, in fact, be exactly the point. I don’t know what I want to write anymore…which means I don’t really know who I am anymore. 

I started and stopped, started and stopped writing this week’s newsletter a thousand and one times. Not because I didn’t have ideas for topics but because I have too many. Too many thoughts floating around in my head that I can’t quite seem to get down on paper. This newsletter wasn’t meant to cause me anxiety - it was meant to be an outlet for it. 

But like everything else in my life, I started to overthink. I started to think that my writing isn’t good enough. People are going to think that I’m whiny or I don’t have the authority to talk about these topics. 

Then it hit me. I’ll talk about this. My past two weeks of being blocked and overwhelmed. My past two weeks of feeling inadequate. My past two weeks of wondering about my entire existence. Fair warning that this won’t be a long post and will mostly contain feelings and very little evidence to back up my claims. But hey, like I said the last two weeks have been a massive shit show.

~

On Tuesday, September 27th, in the year of our Lord, 2022, I had a massive and I mean massive panic attack. I’m talking shaking, tears, and may have lost a bit of time in the space-time continuum. The thing is I haven’t had that type of attack in years! I survived grad school, working through both impeachments of Donald Trump, an election, a demanding news cycle, insane bosses, a pandemic, living for six months at home with my parents, a cross-country move and it only took 9 months in Los Angeles to break me. Before this, it had been about four years since my last panic attack. And honestly, it wasn’t that bad. 

But the last time I had a panic attack as bad as that fateful Tuesday was at the end of 2016. I was working at the Trader Joe’s, or as I call it - the Target of grocery stores, and I had a massive panic attack. I collapsed by the coffee grinding station. My manager called the ambulance and they made me get in. So there I was in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, in an ambulance wearing a brightly colored shirt with a Hawaiian flower in the corner and holding a lime green box cutter trying to convince them to not take me to the hospital. They took my blood pressure - the paramedics had said it was way too high and by then my emergency medication should have kicked in. But the meds didn’t seem to be working. 

I eventually convinced them to let me stay at work. (Which in hindsight was insane. I should have just gone home.) However, I did have to get a check-up one or two days later. When I went into the clinic the doctor ran some tests. I’ll never forget the look on the doctor’s face when she came back into the room with my results. She said she thinks I had a heart attack and I should probably immediately go to the hospital. 

That news hit me. My heart was so strained that it gave the impression that I, at 22 years old, had a heart attack. I went to the hospital and they ran further tests determining that I did not, in fact, have a heart attack but a very severe panic attack. But it put so much strain on me. The fact there was even the possibility I could have had a heart attack - I didn’t know what to think. What I did know was I didn’t want to feel that way again. And for the past almost six and a half years I haven’t.

Yes, I’ve been through depressive episodes over the past six-ish years. I mean no eating and only watching Gilmore Girls reruns but not that type of panic attack. In a weird way, I feel like I felt it coming. 

I felt the impending doom had been slowly creeping in over my psyche. I was coming up with excuses to not see people. I was feeling more and more alone. I should have known that a massive panic attack was coming. I should have foreseen myself crumbling into a shell of a person in the handicap stall at the bathroom at my job. 

Yes, this most recent attack was yet again at my place of employment. Is this a sign that I simply shouldn’t work - possibly? But it had been so long since I had an attack that I forgot to take my emergency medication. I was mid-attack when I remembered. And even then my body didn’t calm down for over an hour. I couldn’t move for 45 minutes. I couldn’t talk for about an hour and a half. 

More than anything, I’m mad at myself. I’m mad that I let myself get to this point. I’m mad that my friends at work had to see me in that state. I’m mad because I can’t seem to figure out the best way to take care of myself. No matter how hard I try, it’s like I keep running into the same brick wall. 

Regardless, I had to wake up the next day and keep going. I didn’t get a second to breathe. I didn’t get a moment to wallow. These past couple of weeks I have felt so out of control. I felt so not myself - to the point where I can’t remember what me is.

So that’s what you get from me this week. Me. Raw. Confused. These past couple of weeks prayer didn’t work. Meditation didn’t work. Comfort eating didn’t work. It was like even God had gotten tired of me. 

I’m sorry there’s no flowery message or lesson to be learned or facts to give you. This week’s newsletter doesn’t even come with a poem. But I think that’s life sometimes. Sometimes life is so difficult that it’s all consuming. All I have are these emotions. Emotions I’m not sure what to do with. So if you’ve seen me smiling the past couple of weeks, it probably wasn’t real. It was a mask so I could lie to you and say but everything’s fine.