Anxiety Takes, Anxiety Gives

A few days ago, I lost my entire afternoon and evening to an anxiety attack I suffered on a stalled A train.

I’d like to think I have a mild case of anxiety that doesn’t seriously affect my life. But even so, anxiety takes things from me.

My time. My nerves. My energy. Things I love doing. And in some ways, it has taken the life I used to live.

During the past few years, I’ve become increasingly panicked, anxious, and distressed when I find myself in confined, crowded spaces. Especially trains. This is problematic for anyone, but it’s especially difficult when you live in New York City and rely on the subway to get basically anywhere.

Of course, nobody likes being crammed into a confined space with strangers. But when I find myself on a packed subway car, I panic.

I start sweating. My hands shake. My heart pounds like I’m running a marathon. My mind races and tells me terrible things that I start obsessing and worrying about.

But I’ve been able to manage my anxiety and have continued living my life. It means I need to give myself extra time no matter where I’m traveling. It means I sometimes need to let a train pass because it’s too crowded. It means I go to fewer Yankee games because if you’ve ever been on the 4 train going to Yankee Stadium, you know it’s a nightmare whether or not you have anxiety about crowded, enclosed spaces.

I’ve made changes and had to sacrifice things, but I’m still living my life.

More recently, my anxiety has also started to encompass a fear of being stuck on a train that’s stopped in between stations, regardless of whether or not it’s crowded. There’s something about being trapped on a locked train in an underground tunnel that terrifies me.

And that’s exactly where I found myself a few days ago on an A train that was heading to Brooklyn.

We were cruising through Manhattan when suddenly, cloaked in the darkness somewhere between Chambers Street and Fulton Street, we ground to a halt.

Less than 30 seconds later, my symptoms kicked in.

I started sweating so much I had to remove my hat and jacket. My eyes darted from one side of the train to the other, searching for nothing in particular. My heart rate spiked. My hands started trembling.

I waited for the conductor to tell us what was happening as if the fate of the world depended on her announcement.

After a few minutes passed without word from the conductor, I grew desperate and found myself frantically thinking about how I could get off the train even though the doors were locked. I tried taking a few deep breaths to calm myself, but it seemed like there was barely any air for me to breathe.

With no other options, I started repeating these things over and over again in my head:

I’m going to be okay

I’m going to get through this

We’re going to pull into the next station and I’m going to walk off this train

I must have said those things to myself 1,000 times.

And just as those words started to calm me down a little, the conductor made her announcement. There was a broken rail two stops away and there was a train stuck in the station ahead of us. There was no “we should be moving shortly,” like the conductor usually says when talking about a delay. Instead, she ended with “we’ll provide an update as soon as we have one.”

My anxiety and panic intensified. I started feeling like I was going to pass out as my mind continued to race.

How long will we be stuck down here? What if this takes an hour? What if we’re here all night? What if we never get off this train?

To fend off these thoughts, I feverishly repeated over and over again that I was going to be okay. It was the only thing I could hold onto that provided any semblance of comfort.

Amidst my distress, I noticed a man sitting to my left who was looking at me. He was one of the few people on the train not staring at his phone in an attempt to stave off boredom. This man clearly saw that I was in trouble. When I looked at him, he nodded his head as if to say, “I know you’re struggling. Hang in there. You’re going to be okay.”

I was too panicked to nod back, but I looked right in his eyes and we connected for a brief moment. It helped to know that he saw me struggling and was trying to reassure me that I would be okay.

But even so, I ebbed and flowed between feeling like I was going to make it and like I was about to pass out.

I couldn’t really keep track of time, but I think we sat between stations for close to 20 minutes before the conductor told us that the train was going to pull into the next station and let us off before going out of service.

A few minutes later, those locked doors mercifully opened and I was impossibly exhausted when I got off at Fulton Street. But I walked home over the Brooklyn Bridge anyway. I simply didn’t have it in me to get on another train after what happened.

I know that I eventually got home and ate something before I went to sleep, but the rest of the afternoon and evening are a blur of frayed nerves and exhaustion.

I was planning to write and go to the gym and have a good dinner, but anxiety took those things away from me. The same way it’s taken other things away from me during the last few years.

But anxiety has also given me things.

On that stalled train, it gave me the experience of accepting another person’s kindness when that stranger nodded and told me, without words, to hold on and keep fighting. Because of my anxiety, I experienced an interconnectedness with a complete stranger that I’ve only felt a handful of times in my life.

It’s given me other things, too. New perspectives. More empathy and compassion for the struggles of other people. It’s forced me to be vulnerable, which is often uncomfortable but valuable in its own way. It’s shown me that I have to be kinder to myself and give myself a break more often.

Overall, it’s allowed me to experience and feel things at a depth I wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

But I’m not trying to romanticize anxiety. It’s absolutely an impediment and something that makes my life and the lives of so many others more difficult. And in more severe cases, I know that anxiety can be a debilitating affliction. Which is a heartbreaking reality.

On most days, even though I’m able to get along okay, it still sucks. It really, really sucks.

I hate having to consider the train situation whenever someone wants to go out. I hate having to decline invitations to places because I don’t think I can take the train with other people that day. I hate having to watch a train pass by because it’s too crowded for me. I hate that I lost my entire afternoon and evening because I was physically and mentally exhausted from getting stuck on that A train.

But I’m also trying to see the positive side. I’m also trying to keep in mind that if I wasn’t battling my anxiety on that stalled train, I wouldn’t have shared that moment with that stranger who nodded to me. I wouldn’t have experienced a subtle but sincere form of kindness that is exceedingly rare.

Of course, I would rather that moment never existed. But it’s okay that a simple nod from a stranger on the A train meant so much to me.

And it’s okay that I battle anxiety when I take the subway. And it’s okay that I need to leave myself more time to get where I’m going. And it’s okay that I don’t go to many Yankee games anymore. And it’s okay that I let a train pass sometimes while I wait to catch the next one.

Above all, it’s okay that my anxiety takes. Because it also gives.