And to be fair, the anxiety attacks are much more disturbing to watch, and I’m very lucky that the worst of them happen only a few times a year. One moment I’m perfectly fine and the next I feel a wave of nausea, then panic. Then I can’t catch my breath and I know I’m about to lose control and all I want to do is escape. Except that the one thing I can’t escape from is the very thing I want to run away from . . . me. And inevitably it’s in a crowded restaurant or during a dinner party or in another state, miles from any kind of sanctuary.
I feel the panic build up, like a lion caught in my chest, clawing its way out of my throat. I try to hold it back but my dinner mates can sense something has changed, and they look at me furtively, worried. I’m obvious. I want to crawl under the table to hide until it passes, but that’s not something you can explain away at a dinner party. I feel dizzy and suspect I’ll faint or get hysterical. This is the worst part, because I don’t even know what it will be like this time. “I’m sick,” I mutter to my dinner mates, unable to say anything else without hyperventilating. I rush out of the restaurant, smiling weakly at the people staring at me. They try to be understanding but they don’t understand. I run outside to escape the worried eyes of people who love me, people who are afraid of me, strangers who wonder what’s wrong with me. I vainly hope they’ll assume I’m just drunk, but I know that they know. Every wild-eyed glance of mine screams, “MENTAL ILLNESS.”
Later someone will find me outside the restaurant, huddled in a ball, and lay their cool hand on my feverish back, trying to comfort me. They ask if I’m okay, more gently if they know my history. I nod and try to smile apologetically and roll my eyes at myself in mock derision so I won’t have to talk. They assume it’s because I’m embarrassed, and I let them assume that because it’s easier, and also because I am embarrassed. But it’s not the reason I don’t talk. I keep my mouth closed tightly because I don’t know whether I could stop myself from screaming if I opened my mouth. My hands ache from the fists I hadn’t realized I’d clenched. My body shouts to run. Every nerve is alive and on fire. If I get to my drugs in time I can cut off the worst parts . . . the shaking involuntarily, the feeling of being shocked with an electrical current, the horrible knowledge that the world is going to end and no one knows it but me. If I don’t get to the drugs in time, they do nothing and I’m a limp rag for days afterward.
I know other people who are like me. They take the same drugs as me. They try all the therapies. They are brilliant and amazing and forever broken. I’m lucky that although Victor doesn’t understand it, he tries to understand, telling me, “Relax. There’s absolutely nothing to panic about.” I smile gratefully at him and pretend that’s all I needed to hear and that this is just a silly phase that will pass one day. I know there’s nothing to panic about. And that’s exactly what makes it so much worse.
Those are the painful days that I think distort Victor’s view of just how badly I deal with people. They’re the days when I’m certain he thinks that a little anxiety-induced social awkwardness is really nothing in comparison to a full-blown attack. And then I have to prove him wrong.
Case in point: This weekend Victor took me to a Halloween dinner party for his coworkers. I’d reminded him beforehand that he was making a terrible mistake, because he’d seen over the years a few examples of me fucking up parties. But he patted my leg and assured me I’d be fine. It was exactly the same way he’d patted our cat reassuringly right before we’d had it euthanized. It was not reassuring.
The drive to the party was long, which worked against me, because already the sedatives I’d taken were wearing off, and it gave me more time to worry about our choice of costumes. We were dressed as Craig and Arianna, the Spartan cheerleaders from Saturday Night Live. When I’d bought the costumes I’d thought it was a pretty iconic pop-culture reference, but when Hailey’s babysitter arrived she’d had no damn idea who we were.
Victor and me as Craig and Arianna. One of us is not even fucking trying.