Shit, Meet Fan

This is not a delightful post. It's not a snarky little romp. It's not cute or sweet or witty. You have been warned.

The following events occurred a little more than two years ago. Some of the elements are fuzzy, shaded by a less-than-precise memory and muted by all the life that has unfolded since. Other details, mostly the scariest ones, are crisp as starched linen, clear as a dewdrop and heavy enough to hold, my arms aching with their weight.

On a Saturday morning, a few weeks after Easter, I woke earlier than I wanted as had become my habit. I had been back on Zoloft for only a few days and had seen my new therapist exactly once. Nothing in my tortured existence had changed substantially. I lay in bed awhile, trying to marshal my countless scattered thoughts and talk myself down from panicked feelings. It's one thing to have anxiety and/or panic attacks and another to have them starting the moment you're awake. It's hard to feel sunny or be optimistic about the day when feelings of dread and angst take hold before you even open your eyes.

There are, of course, commonalities between people who have anxiety but ultimately, everyone experiences it in their own unique way. In my case, I had both amorphous, shapeless generalized anxiety and concrete, distinctive panic attacks. The anxiety hung around all day, a pervasive and unwelcome visitor that started in my brain and permeated my being from toenails to hair follicles. It told me that I could not, should not do anything outside of my comfort zone. Said comfort zone continued to shrink and became nothing more than going to work and holding things together at home. Barely. Every decision in my life became an exercise in "what if?" played out to the worst case scenario every time. Did I not understand all the things I couldn't control and the disastrous consequences of going about the business of living? The classic fight or flight instinct told me I must do one or the other virtually every moment of the day. Yet I could do neither because instead I was paralyzed with fear and prisoner to my thoughts.

My panic attacks were a different animal. They were completely irrational and so intense it was everything I could do not to scream and claw at my own skin. Some people's panic attacks have specific triggers, most of mine did not. As I've noted before, I was incredibly tuned in to my body's every tiny sensation. Sometimes I could feel whatever it was that initiated the meltdown sequence. More often, however, panic attacks came at me sideways, without warning and without pity. Panic would start in the pit of my stomach and radiate from there. I would get hot, sweaty, tingly, dizzy and feel I couldn't breathe. The physical feelings were accompanied simply by the petrified thought: "Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh no!" as though the world were coming to an end. Having a potent and prolonged feeling of impending doom several times a day for no perceivable reason is a recipe for a mental health crisis. I guarantee it.

As I've mentioned, I usually felt better in the late afternoons and evenings and that's when I would take a walk. It seemed natural to pair my better mood with the boost I got from exercise. The first part of the day would be utterly miserable but if I could double up on positive ingredients I could sometimes come close to feeling marginally normal. (By the way, you should know you're in trouble when "sometimes close to feeling marginally normal" is the best you can hope for.) On this particular Saturday I was so edgy and disturbed I felt if I had to wait until afternoon to exercise I would spontaneously combust. I set out feeling like a tornado, purplish-greenish-black and twisted and dangerous. My hope was that a wave of endorphins, however small, would wash over me and release enough optimism to contain the impending disaster. Halfway through my circuit it was evident that it was not going to work. With every step I felt like I was walking closer to the gallows. The fear, panic and dread was so strong, so all-consuming that I did not perceive myself. I only felt like a walking, breathing manifestation of misery. As I stood waiting to cross a street I heard a voice. It was my voice and it was someone else entirely and it had only one thing to say: "END IT ALL." Insistent and commanding. Over and over and over and over and over. There was no room for another single thought. My soul instantly knew this is what it had been both fearing and hoping for. A solution.

I arrived home, head full of toxins, and was on the front step when Troy came from the garage and asked how my walk was. It took no more than that for the dike to be breached and the raw sewage of my thoughts and emotions to come roaring out. I shook my head vehemently apropos of nothing and cried. Sobbed, actually. This is what it felt like to know I had no future. This is what it was to see him for the last time and know there was nothing he could do to help me. In that moment, all I wanted was my friend Kim, who lives next door.  She is one in a very small circle of soulmates who know pretty much everything there is to know about me and love me in spite of it. She's a social worker by trade and a natural-born caregiver who has given me immeasurable joy, comfort and understanding in the many years we've known each other. I said simply "I want Kim" and Troy ran next door to fetch her. I don't know what I would have done if Kim hadn't been home that morning. I imagine I wouldn't be here to write this crappy blog.

Kim came right over and I stood on that doorstep, having an epic hysterical breakdown.  I was screaming and weeping, keening and choking. I remember my face, drenched with tears and mucus. I remember trying to clear it all away, wiping it on the siding in front of our house and then being even more disgusted with myself, which I hadn't thought possible. I remember being unable to stop ranting and wailing. I felt like I was having an out of body experience; I must have already committed the unspeakable act because this could not be me. There was no coming back from this madness. I would not sit down, would not be held or comforted.  Kim would later tell me I looked as if I wanted nothing more than to get out of my own skin. I paced in a four square-foot space and babbled. When it became clear to Kim that I was talking about killing myself she quietly had Troy call 911. She continued to try to calm me until the paramedics and police showed up. They then took over the thankless task of trying to get me to make sense. Most of this is a blur. I know I was thinking about my boys and that I kept saying "My babies, my babies!" although they were sixteen at the time. I could not think about them specifically or what my committing suicide would do to them. I only knew that I was failing them, had failed them, utterly.

After an hour or eight minutes or an eternity or thirty seconds, the EMTs convinced me to go to the ambulance so they could give me a sedative. Everything was up to me. We could go as slowly as I needed. I didn't need to decide anything more in that moment. They assured me again and again that if I chose to go to the hospital there were people there who could help. Help. Yes, help would be good. People who could help? Really? Yes, ok. For some reason I did not think there was such a thing. Not really. I was helped into the ambulance and put on my back on the stretcher so they could administer something to calm me down. Gradually my heart rate and breathing slowed so I was no longer gulping for air though my brain wasn't so easily quieted. They were peaceful and professional, asking their 63,000 questions and taking my vitals. I felt mostly dead inside with a crackly, unhinged exterior. I agreed to go to the hospital where the helpers were said to be. I believed they would take one look at me, know I was a fraud and send me home where I would once again spiral into a storm and do exactly what I had just narrowly avoided.



Well...here I am, two years later. Obviously. My hospitalization and the ups and downs of my subsequent treatment is the next part of the story. In the meantime, I urge you to talk to someone - anyone - if you're having mental health issues. There is help. There is healing. There is no shame in saying you can't do it alone. I promise.

Now...Where Was I?

I want to write about all kinds of things but in order to go forward, I feel I must go back and finish the story I was telling two years ago. New stuff is coming, I promise! Bear with me while I shake out these dusty old cobwebs.


As March marched on and April approached, I became a walking ghost, barely showing up in my own life. Patrick Swayze had nothing on me. In the morning I would try to force myself to stay in bed even though sleep remained as elusive as an honest politician or a decent Nickelback song. I lay there, tossing and turning, obsessively thinking about how awful the day could be and picking apart every minute sensation in my body that might indicate "DANGER!" At work I became more withdrawn and relied heavily on the kindness and steadiness of my "anchor people" (most of whom didn't and still don't even know they were such) to bolster me. On the occasion when one or more of them were not at work my silent screams would have rivaled anything Edvard Munch could have envisioned. I could not work out how to get through the day without my touchstones. Outside of work I started to exercise obsessively, trying to capitalize on that fleeting bit of positive energy I got from rushing endorphins. I became very sensitive to what I ate and when, and so mostly stopped eating at all. I still attended to all my motherly duties, though without much joy and even less patience. I had started stirring a cocktail for a meltdown without even knowing it.

Late afternoons and evenings were almost always better for me, mentally speaking. Maybe just because I was that much closer to sleep, which though not perfect, provided a respite from the constant grinding fear and worry of the day. Yet, what a bitter punishment it was to lie down at night and realize I had wasted the entire day worrying about things that never came to pass. I should have been able to sleep, so tired was I of beating myself up for things beyond my control.  Ah, control...my longtime frenemy.  I can't really remember a time when I wasn't controlling.  I want things done my way, on my timetable, in a fashion that I approve of. That's not the least bit taxing, is it? Growing up, I would organize my friends and relatives into plays and musicals starring me, written by me and directed by...wait for it...me. Woe betide the 6-year old cousin who missed a cue or forgot a line! As I grew into adulthood I controlled relationships however I could. Romantic, friendly, familial, it didn't matter. I always wanted the upper hand, always wanted to be the one to decide the shape and texture of our interactions. It's a wonder any other member of the human race was willing to put up with me for more than thirty seconds. I thought control made for peace; that I could be closer to perfection if I could just have Every. Single. Thing. nailed down. In reality, it's just so very exhausting, this need to have everything on point and following form and I did not have an ounce of energy to spare.

Now, as you may know, time will go on and the earth will turn regardless of what is going on in your life or your head. Stupid time. Stupid Earth. Easter arrived and I shellacked on a happy face and went through the motions of our annual traditions. My little family of four slept in. We had the requisite egg and basket hunt. We had our usual exotic brunch of pastries, juice and hard boiled eggs. I wanted to go for a hike so we headed to the nearby regional park, expansive and brimming with all things spring including massive piles of dog shit exposed after the melting of winter's snow. We walked and talked, and I laughed on the outside while a storm brewed in my brain. Along that walk I began to see all the dark, secret places a person could disappear. Places one could go in the deep of night, take a bottle full of sleeping pills washed down with, ironically, life's perfect elixir (a Coke from McDonald's), lie down and escape forever. Maybe being discovered eventually, maybe not at all. It was thrilling and terrifying, both. In my previous bout of depression, I often had the thought that I wouldn't mind just not waking up some morning. I wanted the constant loneliness and anxiety to stop but never devised a plan. Never felt so low that I would actually begin to determine the how, when and where of killing myself. This time was different.

A few weeks passed, ugly and brutal. It was a Herculean effort to push away the black thoughts that grew more prominent every day. I tried to get help, I did. I went to my doctor who put me back on the anti-depressant I had been weaned off of a mere year earlier. I started contacting therapists, trying desperately to be seen sometime before the turn of the century.  Almost everywhere I called was booked solid. Would I like to make an appointment for September? No, thank you. What I'd like is to jump through the phone line and strangle the living crap out of you. All this while I was working and tending to my family and all this while I felt like every nerve in my body was exposed and raw. I was hanging on by the very thinnest of threads, having panic attack after panic attack all day, every day and feeling barely able to breathe. Finally, I found someone who could see me on short notice and left my first appointment ever so slightly buoyed. However, I was also unnerved by her statement that she would have me "feeling better. Not good, but better." Oh, no. No, no, no. I needed to feel good. Better than good. Perfect. I mean, hello! Control freak, here! One of the most frustrating things for someone who is deeply depressed is that both medication and therapy take time to make inroads into the toxic sludge that takes hold of your mind. Time is the last thing you feel you have.

I'll leave you with a little cliffhanger. The shit is about to hit the fan. The world's biggest fan. Or maybe one of those wind turbine thingies. Just trust me, it gets bad. Fast.

Until next time...