Panicked

Last night, I went to bed happy and full of tacos. This morning I woke up, and my dumb, useless brain, and my stupid, idiot heart didn't care about that at all. As soon as I opened my eyes, I realized that I was having a full-blown panic attack that apparently started without me while I was still asleep. I've never had a one night stand (I'm very, very awkward at bars), but I think I know now what it's like to fall asleep and wake up with a stranger in your bed. 

I immediately ran to the bathroom and started vomiting. This was difficult, because I couldn't breathe. My nose was stuffy and my lungs were empty and I was pathetically coughing up bile into my sink with only half my hair pulled back because I couldn't find a ponytail holder. As soon as I stopped puking my brains out, I called my doctor to make sure I wasn't having a heart attack or a nervous system shut down or a violent explosion of vital internal organs. As usual, when I ask him this, I can hear him roll his eyes over the phone as he says, "No, Whitney, you're not dying." 

Next, I called my mom because I didn't want to be alone, and she told me to take a shower and a walk around the block and try to feel better before I had to leave for work. This alerted me to the fact that I had to leave my house in ten minutes if I wanted to arrive at work on time. I wasn't dressed, my teeth weren't brushed, and my car keys were buried somewhere in my sheets. I popped a Klonopin onto my tongue, swallowed, and started driving. In hindsight, this was not a good idea, because the 405 freeway is very difficult to navigate with psychiatric drugs in your system. But we can't all be Bruce Wayne, so I sucked it up and toughed it out and kept myself awake by pinching my cheekbones every time there was a lull in traffic.

I am telling you this, because I don't want anyone else to feel as alone and shitty as I did this morning, frantically texting my doctor while trying to get ready for the day. Sometimes, self-care isn't an option. Sometimes, you don't have twenty minutes to take a shower and a walk to calm yourself down, because other people are depending on you to, you know, perform your normal responsibilities and duties like an adult. Your job doesn't pause itself just because you're having a panic attack. Your kids still need a ride to school and a sack lunch and a healthy, functioning parent. Your boyfriend still needs a mentally stable girlfriend who won't have a freak out five minutes before leaving the house to go to a New Year's Eve party. Your taxes are still due. Your best friend's long-awaited 25th birthday party is still happening. Your dog still needs to be walked and fed and loved and played with. Your rent still needs to be paid on time. 

We can triage these things, cut out the needless (the birthday party might be lower priority than say, making sure your kid has a sandwich with the crust cut off in his lunch bag), but ultimately, people with anxiety aren't really "allowed" by society to just stop being people. If that was the case, oh my god, I would just stay in bed forever and live blissfully underneath the cover of an all-day Law & Order: SVU marathon while I snacked on Thai take-out from my favorite Midtown noodle bar. I would practice self-care ALL DAMN DAY. I would take my time and give myself the kind of space and patience that I think I deserve. I would let everything that made me anxious fall to the wayside. 

We live in a world that allows us to do these things sometimes. Yoga classes are available. Snuggling a puppy is always an option. But sometimes, you just have to leave the house and go to work and pay your bills and show up for the people in your life who love you and need you, because those things are important, too. 

To anyone else out there struggling to be a person with responsibilities and families and friends and other people who depend on you, let me just say this: I FEEL YOU. I feel you so hard. You are doing a great job at being a person, even if you don't think you are. Your shitty brain and your stupid heart won't get away with this. You won't go down without a fight. You might forget to cut the crust off those sandwiches, or be late to work, or have a meltdown at a party, but you are still cool as hell and I believe that you've got this.

Sometimes, abandoning your responsibilities is completely unavoidable, and that's okay too. Do you. Listen to your body. Listen to your dumb, evil brain even if you don't want to. Take care of yourself. Take care of the people you love. Just do your best. I promise that nobody will hate you for practicing self-care. There is literally nothing wrong with putting yourself first. You are not a worse person or a better person than someone who chooses to do something differently. You are strong and smart and rad, and self-care is the most important thing in the whole world that you could ever possibly do for yourself.

But for those of us who are occasionally unable to take a break from battling our brains: we are stronger than we think. We can do this. We can drive to work with Klonopin in our bloodstreams and Elliott Smith on the radio. We can show up and be present even when it sucks super hard. We can do our best to be okay even when we're not okay. We can adjust and reconfigure and find a way to do the things we feel like we can't do. 

When I was vomiting in my sink this morning, trying to re-teach my body how to breathe on its own, dialing my doctor's office line with one hand, and holding my hair back with the other, my only thought was, "There's no way I'm leaving my house today. You can't possibly make me." But I did it anyways, because today, I am so sick and tired of trying to constantly battle my idiot heart and my loser brain. 

They shouldn't get to win every time.