24
I lay awake, following the whirlpool of thoughts deeper into my self-consciousness. At first, it was trepidation about the anxiousness exploding into a panic attack. I existed on this brink that represented this horrible danger. Beyond it, I didn’t know what else there was. Madness, maybe. Or that’s what I thought when I was younger and naïve. Then it was worrying about possible health issues. Like that small lump that appeared on my hip following a game of tennis when I was just sixteen. Cancer, maybe? That was a weekend of worry, until my GP told me it was some fatty deposit. There were other things that cropped up. Like,…
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…