Found myself on the verge of a panic attack this morning.
It was a weird feeling, only half familiar. The nausea. The almost atomic-level trembling, invisible to the naked eye but beginning to quiver through the particles of my body in subtle, seismic portent. The fluttering almost-hitch in my breath. The internal barometric pressure building to some black-clouded break. The ache tightening my tear ducts. The flash of adrenaline through my blood. The pinned wide eyes sweeping lightning glances around the room, the desperate urge to flight. I experienced it half-distantly, thinking, oh. I remember this.
The weirdest part was the emptiness behind it - not the emptiness of loss, but rather the emptiness of any real cause. I cast around in my mind for what might be causing stress, anxiety and panic, but couldn't locate anything.
Which, I think, is what triggered the panic.
My mind keeps racing, trying to latch onto one of the many anxieties that have consumed it for the last two years. It grabs at a shadow that looks like job worry, to fall back confused that job worry is gone. It scurries to relationship worry, but that has vanished too. There's some sadness and loneliness and exhaustion there instead, but those aren't sources of anxiety. In mounting consternation my mind leaps to money troubles, but those are well in hand, bills paid, bills scheduled, budget accounted for. Kerflummoxed, bewildered, it starts whirling in frantic circles, spinning up a dervish of emotional turmoil.
I keep thinking that there's something I'm forgetting to worry about.
But there's...nothing. And I have lived in stress and chaos for so long that I can't relax my CONSTANT VIGILANCE. (Pseudo-Mad-Eye-shout-out.) Non drama feels strange, and strangely threatening. Ominous.
We've been here before. Convalescence from trauma can be traumatic in itself. (Does the butterfly ever have a panic attack because it's not a caterpillar anymore?) It's taxing, changing your brain wiring to be adapted to happiness instead of misery. Happiness is unfamiliar, feels fragile, alien, suspicious.
It'll take some time to relax my rigid muscles, calm my racing brain. My working memory will be occupied for awhile, relearning what it means to operate from happiness as a baseline normalcy. I'll forget things. I'll feel scared and nervous, unaccustomed to a lack of reasons to worry.
But this is better. I just have to batten down the hatches when the panic brews, curl up with myself, and talk me gently down. It's okay, it's okay, you're okay.
And I will be.
