Anxiety and Panic Attacks (Possibly Triggering)

Sometimes, I can feel the cold fingers of anxiety gripping me, wrapping itself around my throat, making it hard to breathe. I can feel the cold suddenly take over me, making me shiver as I struggle to swallow the lump in my throat.

I can feel my eyes water till the tears fall out my eyes as my breath comes out is shaky gasps. I can feel my heart beat faster and then slow, and then faster again. I can feel the moment my body betrays me and my shaky breaths turn into sobs.

What I hate the most, though, is the moment of clarity before my brain stops working. I can think rationally, and know this isn’t right. I know whatever I’m anxious about isn’t even that serious. Academics aren’t the end all of life, I know that. But still, regardless of what I know and believe intellectually, I feel the tendrils of anxiety brush against my consciousness and I hate the frustration I feel when I realize what’s happening.

That’s the part I hate most. The knowledge that I don’t know how to stop it, I don’t know how to stave it off. The frustration that comes along with that knowledge blows away all hope of sorting it out quickly.

The only thing I can control is how I deal, and my first instinct is to close the door so I can sink into the abyss in relative peace. I don’t want my parents realizing how much I hate this, how broken I am. I hate the fact that for those moments of my life, I have no control. I am tetherless and I drift through a space of my own creating, trying to move against the currents to I can get back to my normal state.

Sometimes, it happens when I’m in bed, at the wee hours of the morning, wide awake because my stupid brain won’t stop working. I’ve taken to staying up as late as I can so I pass out immediately and can’t think at all.

Sometimes it happens when everyone in my house is awake, and I have to close the door and blast music into my ears in an effort to push it away and distract myself.

But it has never, ever happened when I was inside my classroom, barring that one time during an exam that I just sobbed on my exam paper because my brain just stopped. I think it has a lot to do with that fact that I prefer that no one sees me that vulnerable, not even my parents. I can’t handle the idea of people looking at me with pity in their eyes.

“Oh, you have it all figured out! I wish I was like you!”

No. No, you do not want to be like me, you absolute moron. I do this- this planning thing- because if I don’t I know my anxiety will probably eat me alive. I need to have control over it, I need to have something I can control. Never mind the fucking fact that it usually does not go according to plan.

Yeah. Yeah, I try and that’s what counts, but what does it really matter? Its not like trying ever seems to get me anywhere. Its not like it stops the anxiety from controlling me, possessing me in a way I can’t help but hate.

It doesn’t mean that I get what I want, and that’s what is the final nail in the coffin. That’s what this is all about, right? Being good enough. Be good enough for a fancy college, be good enough to get top grades, blah blah blah.

People don’t bother me. Their words rarely make me blink. But the moment I am faced with the possibility of failure, it all crumbles down and I am yet again a little child, standing in the rubble of what once used to be a person.

You Won A War

I was thinking about this today, and I realized that we complain about a lot of things- about too many free hours, teacher that annoy us, people that annoy us, how the food in our hands looks like something regurgitated.

Of late, however, its occurred to me that I've started to look at these same things with the response of- at least my city isn't being bombed.

Guess I can now add- at least the Taliban aren't killing me or my children in a misguided attempt at revenge.

What I think everyone needs to realize is that the state of our world right now is so pathetic that there is no longer that sense of surprise you feel when humanity disappoints you.

You no longer feel like the person is something uniquely horrendous- a sole barbarian.

Because let's all be honest here- humanity has always had the potential to be the monsters under our beds, in our closet and in the blank pages of our storybooks. It has always had the potential to create situations so horrendous and horrifying that there are no words to describe the acts.

Rape. Murder. War.

Those children who died were exactly that- children. Those were the innocent souls we should be protecting, the little angels who are our futures.

What kind of people are we, if we cannot realize that children have always and will always be out of bounds?

But I suppose war, as a whole, doesn't really care. When you have an agenda- being it racist propaganda, foolish ideas of supremacy- you don't care if the person in front of you has done anything to you. You don't care that the individual is a child, a woman, an old soul. You don't see a human being.

You don't care at all, because you're out to win a war. Out there, its either you or them, damn the consequences, damn the lost lives.

And damn all the children.

And hey, woohoo.

You won the war.

You got what you wanted.

You now have the blood of millions of children on your hands.

And no- I am not talking only about the 132 children brutally murdered while at school in Peshawar. I am talking about every child who is killed, who is forced to become a puppet in a war they do not want any part in, who is forced to leave behind their innocence in favour of survival.

I am talking about those children who have no option but to give up their hopes, dreams and happiness.

I am talking about those casualties of war that were never even given the chance to live up to their potential.

So congratulations, humanity! Let me bring out the champagne and maybe some party poppers! Maybe even some turkey!

After all, you won a war.