Archive for the Category »panic attacks «

I don’t know how to grieve.

There aren’t many days left of this, are there?  The loss will subside sooner rather than later?  Because I think I’ve been through enough.  I think the molestation, and the rapes, and the abortion, and the years of emotional abuse, and the frequent panic attacks, and the palpitations, and the social ineptitude, and the  last half decade of trying, trying as hard as I can to keep it together and going, to improve myself has been enough.

How much longer can I endure?

Sam and I cleaned the house yesterday in hopes the grief would fleck off like the dust.  Maybe it worked for him; I still feel a fist reaching into my abdomen, up my chest cavity, grasping my bloody heart.  Nothing is stopping the crying these past two weeks.  I think of the day, if this keeps up, when I’ll become as adept at hiding my tears as I am at hiding my twitches.

It started around the same time I stayed home with the flu, two weeks ago.  Maybe it was the rare time to myself to think or one of my delirious fever dreams, but it occurred to me, just as Sam will never again be the person he was around Sang, I will never again be the person I was around Sang.

Even now, I’m crying uncontrollably, nervous I’ll be caught falling apart.  Two months later, the loss, formerly a seeming leech at my back, has begun to resemble an autoimmune disease cannibalizing me.  My palpitations are its gnashing at my heart between meals.

Sam is the only person with the patience to deal with me in this state.  It may be my ravaged self-esteem, but I haven’t felt I can trust anyone else for some time now, and no one’s pushed hard enough for me to feel they really want me to budge.  So, here I am, alone with my cat and Sam, and I’m comfortable, if nothing else.  I don’t think I have the strength to make it another day, but I don’t seem to have a choice.  That seems to be a theme in my life: I have no choice.  No one does, actually.

What’s all my crying worth in the end if I recognize everyone is suffering?  The agreement of existence is to keep enduring the suffering for the chance of reward, right?  It’s a blatantly Judeo-Christian approach to life, but what else do I have to focus on as I go forward?  Why else take this shit if I’m not going to stop hurting so goddam much one day?  Why do others?

Fuck fuck fuck.  I want to scream it, but I won’t.  I can’t.  Mom said that if I scream too loud, I’ll burst the little box inside my throat that holds my voice, and then I won’t be able to speak at all.  I’ll have to make noise with the stuff around me to call her attention, but there won’t always be things around, especially if I fall and can’t get up.  So, there will be times when I’ll need her, but she won’t know and I won’t be able to tell her, because I screamed, so I’ll die.  And then she’ll die from the grief.  So, I don’t scream. If I scream, I’ll cry, and then she’ll give me something to cry about.

There’s never enough to cry about.  The random circumstances that comprise existence demand more tears than the daily flashbacks, and the constant nausea, and the shaky hands, and the medication that never quite works, and the insomnia, and the sexual dysfunctions, and the self-loathing produce.  With every new strike, I become increasingly convinced, Life won’t stop until I’m dead.

I think it’s more valuable to write about how I see the world because of what’s happened to me.  In writing a rape survivor’s narrative, I forgot to give a rape survivor’s perspective.  I forgot myself.

I could be offered death right now, and I would take it.  If it was silent and painless, I would take it.  It’d have a lot more peace than I’ve ever gotten in life.  There’s no point to this piece of shit hovel we call consciousness.  I could kill myself, and how would that affect me?  It wouldn’t.  It would affect the people who remain alive.  But why should I care about those people?  Their feelings aren’t nearly as important as my feelings are.  Or are they?  I’m still here, and I know I don’t want to be.  Clearly, I’m putting other people’s feelings before my own.  Because there’s nothing here for me—a simpleton’s job, a difficult relationship, and my family.

No, nothing to stay for.

I’m not even a good writer.  It’s the one thing I want to be good at doing, and I can’t seem to get it right.  I simply want to die—effortlessly, like life should be.  I don’t deserve this breathing I feel compelled to do.  I can’t endure this anxiety.  I’m exhausted with the meds.  I want to close my eyes, then not wake up.  A forever sleep sounds heavenly.

Instead, this nothingness is a vice, an addiction, a warden.  There’s nothing left outside of me that matters, so I withdraw from the world in every way, at every opportunity I can.  I wonder if there’s a name for the emotional equivalent of the fetal position, and where can I find that information out.

That’s what I wonder only seconds before I realize I use learning as a sedative, the way others use food or sex.  I can’t yet fathom what I’m so afraid will happen if I rejoin the world.

As usual, I don’t know the answer.  Simply, my little voice says, Little Lucy is always afraid; she needs no evident reason to be. After all, I’m crazy and strange.  Can’t I see it in the eyes of coworkers and acquaintances?  I’m a freak.

Or so the paranoia I’ve been fighting these past two decades momentarily led me to conclude.

At once, my focus and retention rate cause me shame.  There’s nothing cohesive enough about my thoughts to create something cohesive to read or to speak.  Among my million other fears, I’m afraid depression is robbing me of my ability to express myself effectively.  I feel dumber and crazier.  I fear I’m slipping.

I think, who will tolerate me then?

And if I write it all down so I can see how insane my thoughts can be, will I be protected from their effects?

I’m being ridiculous.