Wow, I did it again.
After more than three months without taking a pill, a panic attack found me again and all the way here in mumbai traveling oceans and time zones no less. How rude.
In a sense, one has to marvel at the brilliance of the human body. In my experience, there are very physical warning signs when terror is about to strike. Warning signs I wish I had taken more seriously.
I’m starting to drift away (no pun intended) from reality – it feels like you’ve moved into a different dimension or something and are watching what’s going on as an outside observer, even when you can sit there in a meeting or with a friend interacting . quite normally. But you are not there. I call it the failure in the matrix.
My hands and fingers usually tend to start out feeling stiff and then a little numb, a bit like they’re moving through sand. This will usually lead to heart palpitations and waves of what I can only describe as sheer terror. The time between failure and this can vary from minutes to hours, sometimes even a day. Even though you’ve experienced a panic attack many, many times, when you’re in the terror zone you still think… ‘This is it, you’re going to die now, this is a heart attack.’ Unfortunately, in my experience, there is no way to reason with yourself and convince yourself of this objectively irrational fear. No one else can at the moment either.
Eventually, after what seems like an eternity in hell (probably just a few minutes), the fear wears off and your heart and breathing begin to normalize. I am very shaky and my body feels like the human equivalent of a deflated pool toy. Pure exhaustion and feelings of oppressive then the sadness and worst of all the shame take hold. It is an extremely leveling experience in which you are cruelly reminded of the control you do not have over your own biology. You thought you were over Megha, well you’re not and I’m here to remind you.
I know I am not alone in this and I have made a strong commitment not to be afraid to be open about these struggles. After all, it’s not something to be ashamed of. A radical honesty policy if you will.
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