Two years ago, fresh off of Omicron Christmas, I fretted over a possible ice storm and started noticing flickers of chest pain and heart beats. This resulted in a slow building anxiety, lasting a number of weeks, through a couple of EKGs, a heart monitor, a bunch of doctor’s appointments, and some exciting trips to UNC cardiology and what would prove to be a a mostly benign diagnosis. I was fine. Anxiety. The occasional extra heartbeat. Nothing to be alarmed about. I cruised through spring, into summer and was dismayed that same year, come July when the rumblings and pangs returned. I went through another round of second guessing and doctor visits in and around my sister’s baby shower and my family’s beach trip. I washed up at the ED again on a very steamy August 1st. I waited about eleven hours to see a doctor, and by then I’d once again been declared normal, anxious, perhaps, but normal. Drugs were prescribed to take the edge off. They made me feel dizzy and tired. I toughed it out. I got better. I didn’t expect the cycle to kick back into gear four months later, just after Thanksgiving. I went back to the ED again when I felt like I might pass out, and once again, my heart beat normally. I told myself I was crazy. I told myself I was cured.
A year passes. It’s now almost 2024. I wake up Christmas morning with a pain in my arm that does not subside. It stretches to my chest. The more I think about it the more I feel faint, the more I feel my heartbeat, the more sure I am that I it could be something. The doctor suggest an antidepressant and physical therapy but the former makes my heart race and the latter can’t get me in for three weeks. I get a song stuck in my head. A song a like, but it nestles, plays on repeat as I try to sleep. This happens whenever I’m in one of these phases. In 2022, it was “Pyjamarama” by Roxy Music. In 2024, it is “Blame Brett” by The Beaches. It plays over and over again in my head in the of the night as I fret in and out of sleep. I end up back at the ER a week after New Year’s where they once again rule out a heart attack, but send me to my doctor. They run tests. Lots of tests. I’m normal. My arm still hurts. My chest still hurts. January slouches on and I feel restless, antsy, scared, always just shy of panic. I don’t think any notices. I think everyone can tell. The physical therapist can’t figure out what’s wrong with my arm. He gives me exercises but is not sure they’ll work. My GP won’t refer me to anyone else until I complete three weeks of physical therapy, even though the physical therapist doesn’t want to see me again. My chest still hurts. My arm still hurts. I convince myself once an hour than I’m dying. And then I remind myself that we’re all dying. That’s the human condition.
I’m still getting used to panic, anxiety. We’re about four years into me being rattled around by some tempest of non-specific fears, ranging from teapot-sized to roughly galactic. I never know what brings this shit on. I’m just coasting along thinking about ad copy or why everything has bows on it, and then I’m like hold up, am I having a heart attack? It’s super-discombobulating, and especially so because the lengthy list of things I’ve been encouraged to try to fix it has . . . well, if they worked, I’d probably be writing an inspirational essay about how conquered fear and overcame my shortcomings. I’d probably be mindfully noting my gratitude as I swished down an anti-anxiety with a cup of herbal tea. But they haven’t worked. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t entirely work.
Here’s what I’ve learned about panic: Exercise helps (it is, incidentally, the only thing that has consistently helped so far . . . massages aren’t bad either, but some of us aren’t made of money), and (for me, at least) watching movies/television makes it worse. It’s not the bad things that happen but the bad things that could. It’s not the fear of losing control so much as it is the creeping realization that it’s your fault you did. You could have done something different. You could have caught it earlier. You could have made better choices. You could have. You might have. You didn’t
Panic is all-consuming. It shorts out all pathways except for the one blinding, pulsing, terrible one. It swallows up everything else you are and anything you could be. It is like a jump scare that hits every couple minutes. It is a scream every time you almost fall asleep. Panic distorts the everything. It makes anything feel possible, probable even, except escape.
Distraction is almost impossible, but here I am writing about this with a cat in my arms because I am trying to distract from the lingering pain, the specific and yet disembodied tingle of dread. Maybe I think this will make me feel better. Maybe I think that it’s 2024, an election year, in a global landscape trending authoritarian, with a lot of violence and instability and casual dinner party conversation about genocide and World War III. And we haven’t even touched on climate change or the fact that I’m likely going to get replaced by a chatbot or the fact that low rise jeans are coming back. Maybe panic feels as rational a response as any to the stew we’re in. Maybe you’re in there with me. Maybe you’ll find yourself twirling into it tomorrow or next week or in July. If you do, know that I’ve been there, I may still be there (though I sincerely hope this particular spell doesn’t last forever). And I’m trying really hard not to keep it together so I can get through this, and we can get through this, and maybe find a way to consider a future unknown with something closer to hope than terror.
I’ve attached a picture of today’s outfit, because I don’t like to end on such a a serious note and I liked writing about the outfits (I’ll probably write some more about outfits). This one involves a skirt I think is supposed to be for ballerinas. I am not a ballerina, by any stretch, but I do love their outfits. If I do, in fact, stress out and my chest explodes, Alien-style, because I’m so stressed out worrying that my chest might explode, please know that there are plenty of tutu-adjacent skirts in my closet to go around. Don’t judge.
Tiny Commotions 