I woke at 5am, as seems to be the norm these days. What am I doing with my life? Will I ever reach my dreams? Why am I acting like a crazy person? Should I cancel my hangout plans with friends last minute? Should I go to the protest today after all? Is my period late, or am I just bad at tracking it? The phone screen shines in my face to distract me from lay-awake thoughts till 7:30.
I shower and consider the day. This protest is important. It’s not that hard to show face for what I believe. Just so someday when I’m asked where I was this day, I can say with pride I was there. Perhaps I can stop by after the Pretzel party?
I clutch the windowsill and feel the breathing pattern of another panic attack. The thought spiral starts, and I try not to let the recognition push me further into the sinkhole of paralysis. I don’t want to be stranded in the shower. It’ll be another hour at least till my husband wakes and thinks to check on me. Breathing exercises have always been my Achilles heel, but I try to get myself under control in roundabout ways.
I’ve had two panic attacks in the last three weeks. It’s affecting my work. My boss and co-workers say to take it easy, give myself space to heal, but everyone is busy and stressed for the summer surge, half the team is out of office, and I want to do my part. Besides, I’m taking a week off in July while my dad visits. I need to get ahead of my workload.
The first attack I blamed on a combination of work stress and too many social obligations. A non-stop turnstile of friends and family for months prevented me from recovering my social battery. Then, of course, someone asks what I’ve been up to, and I draw a blank. Where did my time go? My finite life slips away through my fingers and I can’t account for its expenditure.
I had time to introvert. My work stressors smoothed themselves out. I told anyone who asked that I’d recovered. Then I sat down at my desk after lunch on Thursday, and found that I couldn’t move the mouse. I couldn’t move at all. Just click on the email, I told myself. It’s not even a stressful email. Just open it. Just open it. Just open it.
My husband found me staring at the floor, clutching the arms of my chair. I couldn’t talk, but he heard my irregular breathing. He pulled my stiff body from the chair and took me for a walk. “Stepping away for what I hope is a few minutes,” I managed to post to the work afk bulletin. I missed three hours.
Confusion worsened my symptoms because I couldn’t point to any cause. My brain felt completely out of control. My hand gripped my husband’s in a vice. Eyes darted from tree to grass to sky. My head twitched with each stab of thought. We turned to go home, and I cried out in fear. So we sat on a bench and watched clouds and winds. “It’ll rain soon,” my husband said eventually. He’d been talking the whole time, nice distracting things. “Does that convince you that you want to go home?” he asked. It did. I didn’t want to get rained on. I still couldn’t go into my office, so my mom took me on another walk to the post office to mail my Father’s Day cards. I wore my poncho.
My husband thinks the second attack was caused by politics. I remember my friend who asked if we knew a lawyer, since he’s planning a trip out of the country and is worried he might get detained. I’m worried too, but I know no lawyers. I saw a video of someone who got shot trying to get home. Home was on the other side of a blockade of armed people meant to guard and protect the peace. They shot her as she approached, trying to explain where she lived.
I remembered again in the shower. That’s why this protest is so important. It’s important. But it couldn’t get me out of the shower. Spiraling spiraling. My time and my thoughts circled like the water down the drain.
My scant social bandwidth stretched thin. I just successfully made it through a family birthday on Thursday, and my first dnd session in a month on Friday. I had a thrice rescheduled pretzel party later that afternoon, and a Father’s Day lunch on Sunday. I anxiously wondered if I could make it through those. Cancel the plans, a friend suggested. I’d already delayed these plans from previous rounds of anxiety. I needed to get them over with so they weren’t looming forever on the horizon. Birthdays and Father’s Day can’t be rescheduled.
I could ignore the advice of my boss, my husband, and my mother and go to the protest. What would that look like? Maybe I’d be fine, but my doubt was strong. Crowds are one of my phobias. Who would I go with? What happens if I freeze again? Would I make it back to my car if I got another attack? Would I be safe driving like that? Would I make it to work on Monday if I didn’t use the time to recover instead?
I decided I couldn’t go. I made it out of the shower. I curled back into bed with my husband as he woke, and asked him to get a pregnancy test while he went grocery shopping. Hormones would explain the mood swings, I thought, not sure if it was hope or dread.
On the historic Flag Day 2025, I took a shower, gardened with my pets in the backyard, then had a pretzel party with two friends. We made cinnamon rolls and watched Twilight. I came home and made bread with the leftover dough. The pregnancy test was negative. I watched videos from my friends among crowds of solidarity. It’s not the memory I wished for myself, coated in guilt and shame and weakness. But it was a nice day.
Pirate Ferret.com 