And So It Goes

Have you ever felt a panic attack before? It's one of those feelings you can't quite understand. You feel it coming and yet you can't stop it. Before you know it, you're freaking out and responding with every reaction you can imagine. Crying, shaking, hyperventilating. Breathe in. Breathe out. That's all you can do at that point. Closing your eyes doesn't really help. It's like when you have the spins, the world speeds past you at ninety miles an hour, never stopping. Breathe in. Count to ten. Breathe out. Maybe light a cigarette. That's my routine, anyway. Then I grab a pen. The only way I can handle a panic attack is to lie back and stare at the smoke from my cigarette floating up into the stars and stop thinking. I clear my head, I have to write down everything that comes to my mind. It may be about someone I'm upset at, or a silly situation I've gotten myself into, or a list of everything I need to get done that day. It doesn't matter, as long as I write it down, it can leave my mind and I can really stop.
After the first cigarette, the panic starts to wane. My breathing becomes more natural. The shaking calms a bit. I can finally start to chant my mantra, a quote by Hunter S. Thompson, “Life had improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.” I can finally close my eyes and just listen to the night. This is the time I can start to write about my surroundings. How the night looks, smells, feels. I can describe the smoke from my, now second, cigarette. New thoughts come into play. A song I heard earlier. An interesting idea. As I write it all down, I feel whole again. The world stops going in fast forward. As I write, I feel like myself. I can float freely through my own world and put the pieces into place, make everything make sense. It is my coping mechanism. Writing is the one thing I can use to calm me down, voice my opinion, and put me back on track.
In the seventh grade I found out I could never go to Hogwarts. It wasn't the first time I had the sad realization of my fictional escapes not existing, but it was definitely the hardest. I had just moved from Peñasquitos to Point Loma, and had been accepted to a private school. I guess I had weaved my extreme imagination into thinking the private school was just a cover up for the U.S. route to Hogwarts. I mean, what other reason would there be to uproot me from my comfort zone? I mean, other than my parents trying to put me in a better academic situation with less social issues from my last school. My imagination had been wrong. It was just like any other tiny private school. Well, needless to say, my first week at my new school kind of destroyed my fantasies, what with the lack of magic wand swishing and potions. I was absolutely devastated. I was hoping to live abroad with students who had always felt weird, like me. I needed that escape. So I decided to create my own escape. I became a recluse through the rest of my seventh grade year. I made no real effort to make friends. I avoided all work that was assigned. I had created my own little world of freedom through writing. In my stories I had friends. In my stories I was successful. In my stories I could be who I wanted to be.
I wound up flunking out of seventh grade. I had to leave that school, so I was sent to a magnet school for the arts. Unfortunately, my lacking in socializing with people the year prior meant I had no idea how to talk to people anymore. I was essentially silent unless I was needed to answer something in class. My teachers got worried about me, which in turn got my parents worried. They sent me to therapy, which would have been completely helpful if I ever spoke to anyone at that point. The therapy sessions were awkward and for the most part it seemed as if the therapist felt defeated. It was like pulling teeth to get me to talk. Finally, she came to a conclusion that I should write in a journal so she could review it and help me through whatever it was I needed help with. That was probably the best idea anyone could have ever had. I wrote down every feeling and problem in my life. Every moment that distressed me went into this journal. As she read it, she would comment on things she thought were making me the way I was. This lead to figuring out my issues with authority, making friends, connecting with my family. The “breakthrough” was when she told me to try to describe in extreme detail, the absolute worst feeling I experienced on a regular basis. I described shortness of breath, my mind felt like it was swimming, and an extreme need to run and cry my eyes out. Turns out, I was having daily panic attacks, causing me to be completely unable to have a conversation with anyone without freaking out. Writing everything down helped me figure out how to organize my thoughts and confidently walk through life.
I changed schools one more time in high school. The school I had been going to was extremely far away and my parents had started looking into the Coronado School of the Arts. It was supposed to be much more academically prestigious and the arts program much more rigorous. It was definitely a change. I had finally managed to calm my nerves long enough to make friends there. It was a nice change for me, but then I finally had to face the whole teenage ordeal of relationships and drama. I experienced the teenage life at breakneck speed. I somehow became social, got a boyfriend, broke up with said boyfriend, had a fling, got my heart broken, dealt with debaucherous shenanigans, and experimented with the “sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” mentality in under two years. It was exhausting and overwhelming. I had no control over my life anymore. I made every mistake in the book. I was doing exactly what I had planned to do. In order to be a writer, so I had been told, you have to experience life. And boy, did I ever.
The end of my junior year, I had to do a creative writing assignment. There were no specifications other than it had to be longer than five pages. I wrote a screenplay, hoping to express every real detail of a teenager's life. I wanted to show something different from American Pie or any other silly movie about high school. It was everything I had hoped it would be; a 70 paged script with all the gory details of a nerd's view of teen life. It expressed all the feelings I needed to let out, all my opinions on the idiocies of adolescence, and every frightening detail adults don't ever want to know about sixteen-year-olds. I got a 'C' on it. The notes written in the margins said things like, “too inappropriate,” and, “this is a paper for high school, keep that in mind.” I guess my teacher was right, but I still think that was the closest I ever got in my teenage years to actually getting my real opinion out in the open.
Writing is the only thing that has been with me through thick and thin. It's gotten me through every heartbreak, every disappointment. It is my coping mechanism, my crutch. It helps me see what I need to. Life is only bearable with a pen in my hand. Otherwise the world begins to rush past me. Life falls apart. Problems pile up around me, closing me in. Breathe in. Breathe out. Light a cigarette. Stop taking life seriously and just write. And as John Darnielle says, “I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.”