So much to say...since politics have receded from the headlines, I suppose they can recede from my blog for a moment. Earlier this week I learned that a co-worker's fiance had an anxiety attack while he was at work. I am not sure if I was supposed to know about it...but I did. So the next time I saw her I pulled her aside and asked her how he was doing. I told her about my experience dealing with anxiety back in 1994...she was, as most people are, surprised. I think people are surprised not so much that I dealt with such a real and debilitating mental health problem, but rather that I talk so openly about it. And so I explained to her why I am so open about it.

When I was dealing with my anxiety back in 1994 I was 21 years old. I didn't know it was anxiety that was waking me up in the middle of the night with a tight chest and tingling in my hands and feet. I thought I had poor circulation...eventually I convinced myself I had a heart condition. Eventually the anxiety did worse than wake me - it kept me from going to sleep. I was afraid to sleep because I thought for sure that I would have a heart attack in the middle of the night and die...somehow I convinced myself that if I stayed awake, I could keep the killer heart attack at bay. The anxiety also kept me in the house. Sure, I went out on occasion - I was 21 years old living in Washington, DC...I couldn't help but be social. But I always left early because my head would be spinning, I would feel a shortness of breath and that certainty of my impending death sent me home (after all, I would much rather die in my apartment than at Bardo or the Tombs!)...For months I struggled with the certainty that I was suffering from some scary disease but was too scared to tell anyone about it...I felt somehow ashamed about it. The only person I would ever mention it to was Behnaz...I don't know why she was a safe place to talk about it but she was. I called her often times in the middle of the night crying, explaining that I was afraid to go to sleep. She would invite me over to her apartment and let me sleep in her bed while she slept on the couch. She would put a "Sounds of the Ocean" CD on and tuck me in...Within minutes I was asleep. Eventually I bought my own copy of that CD (late one night I was so stressed about sleeping that I ran to Tower Records in Foggy Bottom, which closed at midnight, to get a CD so I could sleep in my own bed) and it was the only way I could ever fall asleep at night.

It all came to a head when I went to Boston with R____ one weekend in early June. We went out with Ted and his friend to some random bar in Cambridge...I was paranoid, certain that people were staring at me and that they knew about my secret. I got up to go to the bathroom and my chest felt so tight, my head so soupy, that I had to get out of there. I managed to convince the rest of them we had to go and so we left. R____, Ted and I went back to our hotel in Wellesley. I couldn't sleep, of course, and didn't have my CD with me to help. I went to the bathroom and started to throw up...My heart was racing, my head was spinning out of control. I couldn't take it anymore. I woke Ted in a panic..."Take me to the hospital, I think I am having a heart attack." He drove as fast as he could to the nearest hospital and I went to the emergency room. I explained my symptoms but when the nurse took my pulse it was normal. That didn't make any sense to me...They called me into the back of the ER and laid me into a bed. The doctor gave me two little yellow pills, which I found out later were valium. It was here that I found out that what I had been suffering from all those months was...ANXIETY. I was having almost daily anxiety attacks, made worse by the anxiety the attacks themselves cause. Also made worse by all the caffeine I was drinking...in order to stay awake at my two jobs (the first one was 7:30am til about 4:30pm...then I headed to the restaurant where I was working and worked there usually until at least midnight, often times later. Then, to not be held captive by my need to work two jobs, I went out - just about every night - with my restaurant co-workers to the Red Lion (a bar next door)). So, I would get a double latte at Dean & DeLuca every morning on my way to work. Once I was done with that, I would break into my jug of iced tea that I made every night at home - several tea bags steeped into about a gallon of water...Then, when I got to the restaurant, I would drink iced tea all night long (since I didn't drink soda). Needless to say, that's too much caffeine for one person!

The ER doctor ordered me to immediately go cold turkey on the caffeine. I couldn't even do decaf. He should also have ordered me to undergo a psychaitric evaluation (I know that now!)...But he did tell me that I had too much stress in my life. Between the two jobs - both of which I hated, the long distance relationship and my slowly but surely dying grandma, I was about as taxed as one 21 year old woman could be! So, I cut out my coffee habit and got a new job - one that paid enough so I could quit the restaurant gig. The anxiety went away temporarily but crept back in as my grandmother's health worsened, I moved into my own apartment and my boss at the new job took to verbally abusing me! When my Grandma died, that was about all I could handle. I started to have dreams that my teeth were falling out. It felt so real...apparently those kinds of dreams are anxiety dreams...and so it was back in full force. All the Sounds of the Ocean CDs in the world couldn't make my stress and fear go away. Nothing helped me to feel in control. And I still felt too ashamed to tell anyone what was going on...I mean, some people knew (like R___ and my mother and sister) but not many. So, I quit my job and left DC to move home with my mom...I then made my way out to California where, miraculously, the anxiety attacks stopped. Therapy had to help! Sure, every rare once in a while I will have one...but at least I know what it is...know that I am not in fact dying and know that it's an opportunity to take stock of what's going on in my life and my head so I can get a handle on it. Of course, now I am 31, not 21 - big difference. And I am not ashamed by it anymore. In fact, I have found that by talking about it, I have helped a lot of other people come to terms with their own anxiety. Having gone through it, I was able to have compassion for A____ when he had anxiety. I remember talking to Vaness about it a couple of years later and she said she had experienced the same thing but never talked to anyone about it. Then I talked to M___ F____ and he said the same thing. It occured to me that more people suffer from this thing than we realize and most people are ashamed or afraid to talk about it. But when people meet another person who went through it - someone who is smart and appears to have their shit together - they realize they are not alone, they are not "crazy" and then are not less-than.


Wow, that was a ramble...and I left out so many details...but I had to get it down. I will fix it up later.

So I hope K____'s fiance is okay. And I do hope he gets some help

And next on the agenda, for another non-political day, is my favorite topic - DATING! I need to explore this idea about men who may be off-limits because your friends have a history with them or are interested in them...Usually my moral compass is reliable and I can figure these things out for myself. But once in a while I need clarification. Writing it out usually helps!