Into the void...

2003-12-22

4:06 p.m.

I was feeling pretty good about going home for the holidays until that damned terror alert was announced. You know, that’s got to be the dumbest thing ever created. What good can possibly come from telling the entire country that there have been an increased number of terrorist threats?

Rationally, my first reaction is, so what? Who the fuck cares? I’ve made my plans. I’m not changing them now. It doesn’t matter what I do. If terrorists are going to attack, fine. I don’t fucking care. Just let them do their thing, and I’ll do mine until they kill me. But damn it if it doesn’t make me even more edgy about flying than I was in the first place.

I don’t like to fly. I used to like to fly, but that was back when I was in school and it was still neat to be doing something that was just a bit different from what I was doing all those years when I still lived at home. That was when I thought I was going to die between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-six. Before I turned twenty-one, I was invincible. The plane could’ve lost a wing, and I would’ve been completely assured of my safety because I knew I wouldn’t die before that age.

But now I’m well beyond that point. And really, even after twenty-one, I was still pretty okay with flying because I didn’t care if I did die. If the plane had decided to plummet to the earth, I would’ve been there sitting crazily in my chair, watching the flames out the window and wanting to kill everyone else for panicking in the midst of my moment of exultation.

Knowing you’re going to die has got to be an amazing rush.

There’s something about having an anxiety disorder that makes you both hate your nerves and hate living without them. When you think you’re finally free of panic attacks, you find that you no longer feel anything anymore. And what’s the point of living if you can’t feel anything? Does it matter? So you start wondering, and you start thinking, was it really all that bad? Do I really have to be on all these medications?

It’s fucked up.

I know I have to be on the medications because I can’t get out of bed without them. I can’t hold a steady job without them. I can’t live without illegal drugs and alcohol in massive quantities. I can’t deal with the constant tension of not knowing if I’m about to have a heart attack or a nervous breakdown, fall over dead or kill someone else. I know all this.

But I did it for so long.

Ah, I don’t know. I just hear about these stupid terror alerts, and I feel like I want to punch someone because there’s not a goddamn thing I can do even if I want to. I swear I don’t care. But I still get angry.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’m getting angry about an awful lot of things lately. I nearly had a panic attack last night because I was trying to make cookies to take home with me, and the fucking cookie recipe was in the metric system, and I didn’t have any charts or anything to do conversions. I thought I had figured it out, but apparently I hadn’t. So the cookies were fucked up, and I was so mad as I was trying to shape them into little pretzel shapes that I had to leave Rob to do them because I started to feel an old, familiar feeling.

The very first major panic attack I ever had started because I was mad at my hair. I was brushing my hair, and I just couldn’t get it right, and then I was collapsing in hysterics unable to see straight or breathe. There really were an awful lot of times when I was trying to brush my hair, and I ended up getting so mad that I threw the brush across the room or threw myself face-first on the bed only to pound and pound and pound.

It was the same feeling last night with the cookies. The only difference now is that I know enough about my anxiety and panic attacks and the effects of my drugs and the difficulties of living life in general to know when I’m about to lose control before it actually happens.

And I just have to walk away.

Any time previously in my life, I would’ve disdained the thought of walking away, but you know what? I don’t care anymore. I’m not going to risk my health, and quite possibly my life, for some damn cookies. So screw thinking I’m too strong to fucking give up. Fuck all the times I was told that giving up was wrong. I give up. And do you know what I've learned from all this?

Sometimes it takes a damn strong person to give up.

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