Sink or Swim: Baby’s First Panic Attack

"You have to die a few times before you can really live." Charles Bukwoski

There are tens of journals I wrote either in the moment or after the moment when everything was still fresh and alive inside me.

"Bathtub Breakdown" or "Fucked Up Unicorn" are true gems, but we gonna Tarantino this and start somewhere in the middle.

This one is gonna be a bummer, with some sweet references to jumping off a cliff (literally), trigger warning on that one.

But as dark as this might seem, it was also the starting point to something beautiful: Freedom. And freedom has stages, as I’ve learned. There’s “being in the cage with the door open, knowing you can go out at any time” freedom, “being by the open door sticking your nose out” freedom, “you can leave the cage altogether” freedom, and everything in between, including my personal favorite: “oh, I thought I was already outside” freedom (I wasn’t).

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In my mid 30s a big tornado hit.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this day would change my life forever.

On Friday, 9th September 2022 at exactly 6:46 a.m., the person I had been for 34 years has suddenly died.

9th September 2022,

With my eyes still closed, I start feeling what it can only be described as a storm forming inside my belly. The calm and fuzzy feeling inside me is being replaced by an ominous churn, a sense of impending doom rising from my gut.

I watch how a maelstrom of fear begins to form, growing in intensity with each passing moment. It consumes my chest, squeezing the breath out of me, until I don't feel my heart beating anymore. My throat tightens and my mind is screaming at me from inside my head, as if a malevolent force is possessing my whole being.

The whirlpool of terror inside me is now embodying my whole being, proceeding to become so loud and overpowering, it drowns everything else out. I don't know if I'm still breathing, if my heart is racing or has stopped completely. I don't know where my hands and feet are.

I’m being violently suffocated.

Suddenly, I am jolted from lying down by a violent force, as if something had grabbed

me and refused to let go. My body starts to tremble, as the world around me, as I knew it, no longer exists. I feel my brain detaching from the back of my eyes.

I am now at the edge of the bed, starring at the floor, trying to calm myself down, to make sense of what is happening to me. "Have I suddenly lost my mind? Is this what madness feels like?"

I watch as my arm reaches and picks up my phone. It's 6.46am. I stare at my phone for some time, then I lie back down in an attempt to regain control.

As I lie down, with my eyes closed, I realise: Nothing matters.

I stopped fighting for my breath.

I try to distract myself with the things that used to bring me joy, people I care about, places I want to explore, but then, I realise, they don't matter anymore. What's the point?

Everything I have done, at work, at home and in my relationship, has been wrong.

I don't stick with anything.

I don't do anything.

Why would I?

Literally, nothing matters.

It's all a distraction.

We're just on a rock, somewhere in the dark universe, floating away. There is absolutely no point. No point to fight for another breath, no point to go to work, no point to call Panda for help, no point to talk to anyone anymore. There is nothing, anywhere.

The moment I realise there is literally no point in breathing, I feel my whole heart and mind sinking deeper than I thought possible. I feel a black hole taking over my gut, my stomach, my mind, swallowing me completely.

I should text Panda. I need help. I thought for just one second. Then I realise, What's he going to do? It's not like I'm hurt, or bleeding or whatever. It's all in my mind, no one can help me.

OK, let's think, Why is this happening?

I have another go at fixing this. If I know why this is happening, then I can fix it.

I think long and hard. There is absolutely nothing wrong. There is no reason for this to happen. I guess my mum was right. Your brain tells you what to do and there's nothing you can do about it.

I don't want to be mentally ill, I don't want to deal with this every single day for the rest of my life.

I close my eyes. The moment I do, it's like my brain has also realised what I've just done. It's like my brain is observing me and I'm observing it, both realising the noise will never stop, we will never be ok.

And even if I will eventually be ok, for what?

I jolt my eyes open.

There is nothing that matters in this world. Everything is made up. It's all distractions. And if nothing matters then, why should I stay and put myself through this misery?

I close my eyes again. My mind is showing me the thought of me going to the shed and picking up the Panda's ratchet straps. I then see myself hanging off the oak beams

in the living room. The moment this thought comes to mind, I freak out even more than before.

What the fuck! I don't want to die. I scream at myself.

But what if I will do it? What if I will be so fed up with the feeling that there is no point, that I don't want to do anything ever and I just do it? I just end it. What if I go for a walk and jump off the cliff? You cannot control your mind.

What if it will just happen and there will be nothing I could do about it?

Just call Panda. A thought comes to mind.

I pick up my phone and go to dial.

I stare at the screen for a while.

I stop and put my phone down.

I don't want him to see my like this, he can't help.

I texted Panda.

He came home immediately.

He was worried.

He came in, sat next to me on the sofa and just held me.

We moved in the bed.

He lied with me, holding me and stroking my arm.

The waves of the storm would come and go and he would feel me rising and falling, squeezing me tighter when I was becoming uneasy.

He lied with me for an hour, or ten.

I felt safe.

I didn’t know at the time if I’ll ever be fully ok, I didn’t know what was happening to me or how I’ll fix it but, for the first time in my entire existence, I allowed another person to see me at my absolute fearful, crumbled, pile of flesh and bones human being. I allowed myself for someone to truly and wholeheartedly see me. I was afraid. I was vulnerable and Panda saw all of it. Not only that but he fixed it. He helped me.

On that day, he saved me.

In that moment I had a massive, life changing realisation. I realised that, all my worries, all my fears about being honest with Panda were irrational. This moment has proven to me that, somehow, I have never seen the full, strong, mature, reliable man Panda was. He can handle anything, it was me who held back for so long because I was scared he won’t see or understand me. In that moment, I felt close to Panda, like our skin was touching without the thin glass, for the first time in 12 years.

For the first time in my life, I was fully seen, stripped bare of all my defences, and I realised how much of myself I had been hiding, not just from him, but from me.

That day, Panda saved me. But in saving me, he unknowingly opened the door to something far greater. I didn’t know it at the time, but the very experience that un-numbed me and forced me to start awakening to my true self, pulling me out of the empty shell I had been, merely going through the motions, would also be the experience that led to losing him. Because, as I would soon come to learn, if you don’t grow together, you start speaking different languages.

My biggest fears have become reality but they have been liberating. Life will give you countless changes to look at yourself and your beliefs but you’re not ready till you’re ready.

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Following this sweet, sweet morning in September, my biggest fears, the ones I have had since the moment I can remember my own self, have become reality. Not once, but twice (cos I didn't fully get it the first time around). There were bitches to deal with but they have been liberating.

Life will give you chances to look at yourself and your beliefs but you’re not ready till you’re ready. I can’t be mad at the version of me from one, three, five, ten years ago. She did her best with what she had. She walked so I can run.

I loved something Gabor Maté said: suppressing your true self and your needs is like holding a beach ball under water. The longer you hold it down, the more pressure builds, and the greater the strength required to keep it submerged. Eventually, your body will tire, and the ball will be catapulted out of the water with a force equal to the effort you used to suppress it. The more you held it down, the higher it will bounce. Based on my own personal experience, I can confirm that the science checks out.

This journal came after two years of brain dumping on my phone when I 🍃 because three decades of suppressing a beach ball under water was getting harder to control.

I went through extreme lengths to ignore my own being. One day, when brain dumping wasn’t enough, when I was truly drowning and felt a deep need for someone else to know my inner turmoil, I sent one to Deux Moi. But that story is for another day.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Deux Moi is an anonymous celebrity gossip account. I am neither celebrity nor gossip, but I was anonymous.