My Demons
My eyes flash open to pale sunlight filtering through the curtains. I’m lying on my back, with my down comforter pushed to the left side. My chest feels tight and I can’t breathe, as if something or someone is sitting on top of me. My head vibrates like it’s been hit, once, twice. I twist my head right and glance at the clock beside me, squinting because I’m not wearing my glasses.
5:55 A.M.
I turn my head back so I’m staring at the ceiling again. The mere motion of that is enough to unleash another furious pounding session. I realize I’m sweating. I can feel the moisture forming along my brow, my arms, my legs. I can feel it seeping through my t-shirt and pooling in the space between the small of my back and the sheets, warm and damp and uncomfortable. I struggle to push out a breath and pull another one in, but the effort of it feels like trying to move a mountain.
This is me unfiltered.
The sunlight has pierced the slit between the curtains and fallen directly into my eyes, but I’m unable to gather the strength to move the fews inches right or left that would save me.
I can hear my heart. Thupp-thump, thupp-thump, working overtime, working full-steam, going a 1,000 miles a minute, the beats vibrating up and down my spine.
I try to open my mouth, to say something, or even just make a noise, so that I know that I am really alive. But opening my mouth simply lets the last of my air seep out. I feel deflated, like a child’s soccer ball that has been lost at the back of a closet.
I know what will happen next — the total paralysis, the inability to move even a fraction of an inch of any part of my body. I can feel the nerves and muscles in my neck and shoulders stiffening in preparation for the moment. And then will come the flood. The floodgates at the back of my mind will open, and every painful, disturbing, and stressful thought, feeling, and emotion that I have ever had will come rush through the gates and spill into my consciousness. And I will lie there trapped, unable to move, unable to call for help, or even breathe, while forced to relive every anxiety I have ever had. This will continue for seconds, minutes, hours, until time blurs together into a seeming eternity. Each spell is different. Some of have lasted for days, others have been gone by the time the clock hits the next minute. The duration of each attack is irrelevant, once it hits, the damage has already been done.
Knowing I have only seconds to go before the attack sets in, I reach out with my right hand and grope blindly on the floor for my cell phone. My hand closes around it and I pull it up over my head, to within a few inches of my face. No calls, text inbox empty. Using my thumb, I’m able to send out one quick text message which will go unanswered, before I’m forced to let the phone drop back to the mattress. Even as it bounces awkwardly off the mattress and clatters back to the floor, the attack strikes.
This one will turn out to last 9 hours and 35 minutes, meaning it is after 3:30 in the afternoon when I am finally able to close my eyes again and get another 45 minutes of sleep.
However, as the clock ticked slowly past 6:00 A.M. this morning, I could not know that. For my body was rigid, the floodgates were open, and my nightmares were all there together, at once.
My name is Matt Snell, and I suffer from extreme panic attacks. This is me unfiltered.
Was there a trigger for the attack? Yes, there always is. But the trigger is unimportant. It was simply the excuse my brain needed to wrestle control away from me. Constant vigilance and an awareness of my body and mind’s needs has been the only effective way I’ve ever had of dealing with these spells, and sometimes they just get away from me. It has been roughly 2 years and 11 months since my last major one, so I did pretty well this time around.
This was originally written on October 21, 2007. It has been just over 24 hours since my last panic attack, which thankfully only lasted about an hour and a half.
