Escaping myself

What are you so afraid of that every breath feels like hot needles making their way into your lungs? What are you so afraid of that jumping into the abyss feels like safety? What are you so afraid of that you would gladly trade your life for another? With all the consequences.

In the almost 34 years I’ve been in the world, I’ve spent a lot of it being afraid. I wish for all of our sakes that I had been an exception, but phobias and anxiety attacks are part of the norm in this day and age. However, the thought that I don’t have to live alone with my panic has never comforted me over the fact that I remember good things little and my panic attacks very well.

I had my first panic attack when I was 6 years old. Of course I didn’t know that, but after 34763 panic attacks and countless therapy sessions, I know that I was 6 years old when I snuck into the bathroom at night and lay down in the fetal position in front of the bathroom keys.

An incredible nausea had come upon me and robbed me of sleep. With my little child hands, I drew patterns in the fuzzy rug I was lying on to calm myself down.

This was relatively harmless and with my childish naivety, I believed I had eaten too much chocolate. My fear, sat like a snowball in my stomach and rolled through my life sore growing bigger and bigger.

Years went by in which I got used to little quirks. Little habits that made my friends, my family, and sometimes myself roll our eyes.

• I would not eat anything with a mushy consistency after seven o’clock in the evening.
• I would always sit close to the toilet or exit in the cafe.
• After eating I would check in the mirror if I am pale or sickly looking.
• If someone was eating the same as me, I would ask them questions about their well-being to make sure I was safe.
• I would drive my car instead of riding with someone so I could stop “if something happened”.

One day I came home and found out my dad had an upset stomach days before. I was 20 when I burst into tears, shaking all over, unable to breathe, and as if in a frenzy, began to disinfect the apartment. The fear of infecting myself was too great.

For the next few days I stopped eating, because if there was nothing in my stomach, I could not throw up.

Fear does not ask for logic. It asks for your soul.

I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t touch doorknobs, couldn’t go outside. The danger was too great. Still I didn’t know what was going on. Never eating when someone else was sick was my normal.

But the lump in my throat and the glass ball around me were new. It didn’t matter if I was about to watch a movie or chat with my girlfriend. Sometimes and completely out of nowhere, fan me into a menacingly tight glass ball whose bulge came menacingly closer and threatened to crush me.

This is not a metaphor or an exaggeration. This was my life.

The glass ball, the lump in my throat and the hot needles in my lungs and the unlikely threat that if I lost control and threw up, I would die.

The snowball in my stomach, called emetophobia. The fear of vomiting.

I don’t think it matters what we are afraid of. When a fear grips us in this way, there is no need for an analysis of how rational or irrational, the object of the panic is.

Maybe one day I will write a book about how I made gnawing my friend, and maybe I will write about how my phobia dictated the direction of my entire life. But today, it’s all about the fact that I still have a life.

Before I knew what panic was and understood how my phobia robbed me of my awareness of safety and beauty, I saw in myself nothing more than a young college student about to go crazy. Not in the flamboyant way. Rather in the way that would later be discussed and pitied between psychology students in the curriculum.

Before I could get help and before there was a name for this nightmare I had to take a leap were. This article is a tribute to my leap and a thank you letter a my younger self.

The Leap

I was on my way to college and was forced to board a train. A vehicle that can’t stop itself, that I can’t get off of easily, and a vehicle that carried millions of diseases from A to B and back. I stood at the railroad track and waited for the train. Almost peacefully I wasted no thought on bacteria.

Rather, I was mentally preparing for my lecture. Ironically, a lecture in “psycholgy” was waiting for me.

When the lights of the train appeared in the distance, it felt like someone had hit me in the nude with a stick. I saw stars and black dots and my knees became as soft as butter. With both hands I grabbed my neck and tried to gasp for air. My pulse was as fast as he train, coming closer and closer faster and faster. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe, and I was sure I was going to die.

I didn’t want to suffocate. I wanted control and for a blink of an eye I thought about gaining control and jumping. I would be hit by the train and taken to a peaceful place. The train was getting closer. I had only one choice. Die by my control or die by invisible forces. I set to jump, squinted my eyes and jumped.

The train came to a stop in front of me and I saw myself half a meter behind the river on which I had just, almost died.

I jumped.

I dared to jump

Back into my life.

And now I am here. Years later.

I live in this life of mine.

I have jumped into my life.

I am enjoying an extraordinary view of the person I used to be. I wave to her and yell “Thank you for staying!”

And I hear her standing down there whispering:

“I never wanted to leave. I wanted to live. Thank you for letting me live.”

In the end, it’s that:

A heartbeat goes up and down,

Up and down.

Up and down.

Fear

Fear-free

Anxiety

Fearless

This is life

Standstill.

One long beep.

One long nothing.

This is death.

The up and the down.

That is life.

And it is beautiful