Nightlight

 Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

-William Butler Yeats, from “The Second Coming”

I had a panic attack last night as I dragged my feet two avenues and one city block through a familiar area of New York. It snuck up on me, snatching me away from the reality of the city at dusk. I heard things differently - when I spoke, my voice sounded as if it was miles away, but when my phone rang, or when a car’s alarm began to throb, the noise was acute and violent, as if it pounded only in my head, and existed only to hurt me. The backdrop of Murray Hill became hazy and difficult to process, although passers-by looked bright and sharp. An intense aversion to these sights and sounds accompanied the otherwise ordinary behavior of the cars and people around me.

The only thing I can think to compare it to is a terrifying waking-dream. While reality is something we must carry, dreams flood through our bodies, and move us along to a destination. In the thick of a true panic attack, reality is at odds with the feeling of being surreal. How can I continue walking down this street, I wondered, past the chalk writing on the concrete sidewalk, around the woman on her cell phone, beyond the noise of an ambulance, if I feel as if I’m not in my body?

It was not as if I didn’t know who I was or where I was headed - I felt the side of his shirt balled up in my sweaty fist. But when I blinked my eyes, everything was either out of focus or brightly hyper-focused, and voices were cottony and dangerous.

We barely made it home. Through the fog, I noted how difficult it was to process the complex pattern of our lobby’s carpeting, and avoided looking at the messy coat of a small, brown dog. The feelings slowly subsided, and were followed by shaky hands, and weak movements. I slept for nearly 12 hours, and feel a bit better today.

It’s like the man in the circus who spins red plates on wooden dowels. He lines them up with great skill, and gives them a swirl. One by one, the plates begin to move, suspended in the air by the rigidity of the poles. He runs from one to the next, pushing them, keeping them looping in the air. Feeling bold, he adds one more plate to the line, wiggles it, focuses on its movement, for a moment forgetting the other components of his act. The first plate slows, and falls to the ground. Such is excess anxiety to a panic sufferer; the collapse is a panic attack. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 12th, 2006 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Panic Disorder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.