Dementors

When I was about 16 years old, I began to have what I now know are panic attacks.  Actually, I’d been having them my whole life, due to various trauma.

At 16, however, I was deeply invested in a fundamentalist church youth group, whose leader was obsessed with rapture theology.  At the same time, my parents were in the midst of drug and alcohol abuse, and my life was thoroughly chaotic.

It wasn’t until I watched an episode of Oprah that I learned what it was.  While I’d experienced those moments as a young child, there were valid reasons to feel that way most of the time.  As a teenager, though, they were chronic, and I was terrified to talk about what I feared for fear it would make the bad things that my brain had whipped up actually happen.

I’ve been on anti anxiety meds for 17 years.  I’ve learned tactics to manage irrational thoughts, and I feel I have a good handle on my emotions.

So I’m writing this, because they’re starting again.  I have no idea why.  The only thing that causes me anxiety, lately, is my health, and politics, and appointments, and my dog’s age… normal stuff.

They always begin with a clammy feeling.  I’m cold, but also feel like I’m sweating.  I feel weight pressing on me from every direction.  My breathing changes.  My mind fights it.  There doesn’t seem to be any particular cause.  It’s just this sudden feeling of dread.  “Death is eminent.”  Then I feel like I need a nap.

The most fucked up part about these new attacks is that there is a familiarity to them that is almost comforting.

The human brain is seriously messed up.