• Sleeping Wide Awake

    Fourteen

    When I think about being nineteen, I remember suffering clusters of panic attacks. I remember hospital visits and having far too many meds thrown at me. I remember that first idiot psychiatrist. And, in remembering all that, I wonder why I had to live that part of my life that way, why I endured such debilitating anxiety while navigating ignorance and contending fears that everything was a precursor to something much, much, much worse. Behind that are the shards of my teenage development. I could masquerade with peers that I was one of them (and still do), but there were always weird things I never quite understood. Periods of manic…