Whirlwind
Wishing for them to stop while begging for them to stay. Because if they go away there is a hole in you, one more, and you can’t afford to lose another fragment of yourself, not when you have no idea of how to pick up the pieces you left behind.
“They” were called episodes; crises of some sort. For a long time, these overwhelming feelings and sensations — physical and psychological — had no name, no identity.
I like to refer to the panic attacks I started having in 2020 as “they” because “they” were real for me as an individual, though often made invisible by the silent absence of identifying words.
This is the story of my anxiety paradox. Probably not my best work; nevertheless, surely one of the hardest to write. I invite you in to appreciate this non-masterpiece.
What it felt like with them
They hurt my skin, my bones, the whole essence of me. Yet, they lasted for so long that I didn’t know who I was without them. They became a part of who I am that impacted everything in me, every way I interacted, and who I interacted with. They were my anchor, my way of knowing that if I didn’t find the strength to get up in the morning or the will to smile in a good day, it was okay, because I was falling apart, and it showed.
With them, I found out that it is possible to feel numb in the most distressful way. When the pain is so immense that you are incapable of feeling anything else. There is no bigger void as the one filled with only one thing.
Once they would start, pain was all I could feel. In their first appearances I just wanted them to go away. I would fight with every fiber of my being to make them stop, but they didn’t. The thing I was most scared of was myself.
I don’t know if it is possible to understand them. I know I don’t. The avalanche of thoughts that invaded every space it could find in the prison that used to be my mind, followed by the loss of the merely natural and basic capability to breathe, to talk, to feel. I would cry for as long as they lasted. I honestly think it was the only way I thought I could survive through them. And I did.
What it feels like without them
When I finally accepted that perhaps they would not go away at all and stopped wounding myself by picking a battle with my own nature, they went away. They didn’t even have the decency to give me notice of their departure.
That is the tricky part. I hated them; they created scars in parts of my body I didn’t even know could suffer any harm. But I lost part of me when they went away, and even if I was no longer constantly reminded of that exact pain, I still had the stitches. I never felt the same, not entirely. Suddenly I was falling apart and now, it did not show.
For what felt like an eternity I perceived the emptiness I could never make up for, the sentiment of not being enough in any aspect of my existence and finding, “I think; therefore, I am” very exhausting.
Yes, I would rather have left my pieces along the road. After all, I lost them, but that doesn’t mean I am broken. I am just in pursuit to be complete in a different way. Instead of picking up fragments, I am trying to build something new.
They have fooled me more than once. They weren’t really gone. Like waves, they come and go in different intensities, depending on how powerful the the winds are that surround me and the currents that flow inside of me. I don’t expect them to go away anymore; that is why I am giving another shot at fighting. Not against them, but with them. They are not part of who I am, yet they show where I am.
I certainly have a long way to go not only in my emotional health journey, but in life as it is. I have to look at those waves passing through me, adapt to their changing, and change my way of dealing with them. I am aiming for the ocean and, to get to the calmness, sometimes you must face the whirlwind.
That’s okay.
Originally published at http://lisraiss.wordpress.com on April 29, 2022.
