Panic.

Up until Wednesday night, I had planned for today’s post to be a life update. I know that sounds crazy, since for the past few weeks I’ve been uploading sad poetry like my life depends on it, but I didn’t have anything sad to write about. I was doing well, and I was happy about it. I was gonna talk about how I’m going to visit my family in a few weeks, and how I’m looking forward to their company. I was gonna talk about how in six weeks I start at my new school, and how I’m looking forward to making new friends and leaving this horrid year behind. But of course, like everything else, this week didn’t go as planned.

I’ll spare you the details, but what it comes down to is money. Due to some technicalities with my student loans, I was faced with the unfortunate truth that attending school this year is going to be much more difficult than anticipated. Financially, that is. And so, at the end of a week where things were going pretty well, I had the first panic attack I’ve had in a little over a month.

Before I go any further, let me explain what a panic attack is. (Or at least, my interpretation – still not a doctor, unfortunately. Boo.) Panic attacks are basically periods of elevated anxiety that reach a peak within minutes and that can include heart palpitations, trembling, vomiting, hyperventilation, shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, accelerated heart rate, and just about any other shitty thing you can imagine happening to your body.

Anyways, for me a panic attack is generally 15-20 minutes of intense fear accompanied by racing thoughts that accumulate on top of one another, so quickly that I can’t catch my breath (figuratively or literally). The thoughts build and build until the anxiety reaches an apex and I’m 100% sure I’m going to die. I hyperventilate, can hardly speak, I feel nauseous and dizzy, and I cry uncontrollably. It’s like my brain gets so overwhelmed that it just starts firing out stress signals to every system in my body because it can’t figure out what’s wrong. Or something.

Once the intensity passes, I’m left feeling exhausted (physically and emotionally), scatter-brained, and generally pretty anxious for the rest of the day.

If you’re thinking, “But Gabby! That doesn’t sound poetic at all! I thought mental illness was a beautiful tragedy!”, I’d like you to go watch 13 Reasons Why and never talk to me again. Because mental illness sucks. And it’s so ugly. And I didn’t start this blog to make you guys think I have it all under control, because a lot of the time, I don’t.

Up until Wednesday night, I had planned for today’s post to be a life update. But there’s no update. Instead, I wanted to share my steam of consciousness in the moments following a breakdown. I thought it might help those who don’t experience anxiety understand what it’s like to live in such a consuming moment. Or, maybe it could make those who do experience panic attacks feel less alone. Either way, these are the types of thoughts that go through my mind when I’m anxious. Reading them now, I know they’re irrational. I know they don’t make sense. I can point out discrepancies like a kid pointing out cows on the side of the highway (you can really tell I’m from the country with that simile, yikes). But that’s the point. Anxiety makes you believe these thoughts make sense. And in a moment of panic, they pile up on top of each other so quickly that by the time you challenge one, six others have already elevated the trepidation tenfold. I’m not sure if this could be triggering to those who experience panic attacks. But here’s a trigger warning just in case. Other than that, enjoy my insanity. (Also, don’t watch 13 Reasons Why.)

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I think the thing that bugs me the most about this entire situation is the prospect of having to quit school for the second time. I already worked through feelings of being a failure when I decided to take a year off after high school, while most people from my school headed off to colleges across Canada and the US with a variety of scholarships and bursaries. I already worked through feelings of being a failure after dropping out of art school. I don’t think I can handle another failure of that magnitude. A double college dropout at twenty? Like, not to brag, but I did well in school (whether that can be attributed to actual intelligence or my crippling anxiety preventing me from giving less than 150% on anything I worked on is anyone’s guess). I can’t be the honour roll kid who works a part time job and lives in her parents’ basement until twenty-five. That’s prideful, and I know it, but it’s how I feel.

Plus, not only am I terrified of being that girl who threw away all her potential, but I really want to go to this school. I picked it out kind of last minute, because I was looking for something to fill the hole that performing left in my life and in my heart, but after looking in to it and touring campus, seeing my classes and meeting other students there, I became genuinely excited. I think I could do really well there. The field of study interests me. It’s something I could totally see myself doing. And now I might not get to. Why? Because my brain doesn’t fucking work. That’s really what it comes down to.

That’s the other thing. When you really, truly, get down to the centre of this issue, the problem is my brain. My mental illnesses. Firstly, if I hadn’t spent most of my teenage years in therapy trying to learn that eating an apple isn’t scary and that the people I love aren’t conspiring against me, I might have had more time to apply for scholarships that would’ve helped me out here. Secondly, if it weren’t for my stupid relapse at the beginning of this year, maybe I would’ve succeeded at performing. Maybe, if I wasn’t such a fuck up, I wouldn’t have panicked to get out of that school so fast and I would have done really well. If that were the case, I’d be nearly half done my program by now, and I’d only have to worry about funding for one more year. Sure, I’d probably have to move home after finishing to make some money before I started auditioning, but I’d still be done college at twenty-one, the age when most people finish. I’m looking at four more years of school here. It’s four more years that I want to do, but I’ll be nearly halfway to thirty when this is over. And if I move home to make money at twenty-four? I probably won’t get to actually start on my career until I’m close to thirty! That’s literally an entire decade that could’ve gone differently if it weren’t for my neurobiology with the functioning capacity of a McDonald’s ice cream machine.

So, start on my career at thirty. It feels like a best-case scenario where I’m still a piece of shit. I come from a family where all my aunts, uncles, and older cousins either went immediately into university after high school or started working right away. I have a cousin who’s twenty-four, has her degree, and is getting married in a month. Married! At this rate when I’m twenty-four I’ll be barely graduating, if I have enough money to attend even my first year of school, that is. And where the fuck am I supposed to find time to date if I’m working full time and living paycheck to paycheck while I’m in school? Forget twenty-four and married, I’ll be thirty just getting back on my feet from college, working an entry level job and swiping on Tinder to feel better about my pathetic life.

AND, there’s always the possibility that I come up with the money to go to school and pay rent, but I don’t have enough for groceries. I’m already at the point where every time my family sees me, they tell me I look too thin. (Which is great for my dysmorphia, I’m so glad you asked!) If I don’t have enough money for groceries, I probably won’t do as well in school, because I’ll be thinking about how hungry I am all day instead of the actual material. Not only that, but if I lose even more weight, by the time my family sees me at Christmas (if I have enough money for a flight home), they’ll assume I’m starving myself again and will force me to drop out, which brings us right back to square one.

Also, forget making friends, because when I’m in school thirty hours a week and working thirty more, plus homework, laundry, groceries, cleaning, sleep (optional?), commuting, and extra cirriculars, I’m not going to even have enough time to shake hands with someone. And, let’s say I do make friends, what do people like to do to socialize? Go out, get food, drinks, see a movie, etcetera. And guess who can’t do any of that? Me, the girl who will be eating sleep for dinner for the next four years!

God, why didn’t anyone tell me adult life would suck so much? Does it get worse? Does it get better? It sure as hell feels like it can’t get any worse, but that’s what I said to myself when I was leaving art school, that’s what I said to myself when I was thirteen and being admitted to the hospital, and guess what? It! Got!! Worse!!!

I fucking WISH I had appreciated how good my life was in high school. Even though I didn’t have that many friends, even though my mental stability was fragile, even though I was in therapy once a week learning to think like a normal person. Now I’d love to go to therapy, but one session is like two months’ worth of groceries. I’d love to have friends, but I can’t afford to leave my house other than to work. Good thing my roommates are nice.

I’m just, I’m freaking out here. I can’t be the girl who’s a double college dropout at twenty. I can’t be the girl who’s just starting her career at thirty. I can’t be the old spinster who never had time to find anyone because the shitty decisions she made in her youth prevented her from ever having a second that wasn’t about work, and money, and saving. I can’t be the thirty-five-year-old trying to “get back on her feet” living with her parents or the forty-year-old living on the street because her parents kicked her out because they got tired of her mooching off of them and she never found a job in her field and nobody wants to hire the middle-aged woman with no experience who barely meets the qualifications. I would die. I could die. I feel like I’m gonna die. I’m dying.

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Do you see how panic attacks happen?