The feeling came on suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere; like the flash of lightning before the clap of thunder. The feeling that something really bad was about to happen.
The panic had suddenly set in. On a rainy morning, in the car on the way home from a sleepover with a friend. Or maybe it wasn’t panic yet, but the suggestion, the announcement of it. Like the flash before the thunder that is yet to come. The roar that lets you know you’re approaching a waterfall before it appears in your field of vision.
My hands started to tingle. My lips too. My scalp seemed to tighten around my skull. My field of vision, which only a moment ago included the horizon and the meadows on either side of the highway, narrowed like a fisheye lens to a single point on the road ahead. As if the world around me was pushed into a funnel and seemed smaller but still remained the same.
“As if the panic was a cat trying to push itself in through a cat flap”
“Oh shit, this just might not go well.” I think I said it out loud. Maybe because I hoped it would help. As if the panic was a cat trying to push itself in through a cat flap and I could keep the flap closed with the sound of my own voice. “Just keep looking at the road. Just keep looking at the road. Going all right. You’re doing well. Nothing wrong.’
I tightened my hands on the steering wheel, opened the window, let cold air and raindrops blow into the car, and spoke to myself again. ‘And now you’re going to put on some music. And just sing along. And then we drive home quietly and everything will be fine.’
‘The next time I felt the hatch flapping was at a dance class’
It also turned out fine. I came home safely. The cat flap never flew open all the way. But I knew now that it could move. The next time I felt the shutter flapping was at a dance class, Modern Jazz Beginners to be exact. A lesson that I had booked to have fun and relax a bit. My friend Maartje, who actually belongs in the advanced class, came with me out of solidarity. To encourage me. And, but it wouldn’t show until later, to see me fall apart on that ballet floor.
I don’t know what it was. The pace. The movements. The teacher’s voice, which sounded so much louder, faster and stricter that morning than I could seem to bear. The moment we had to dance two by two – go, two three, go, two three, go, two three, go – and I felt my brain lock with a soft but sure click. That fisheye lens in front of my eyes again. That tingling in my fingers again.
‘About wanting less than you have to, and being able to do less than you want’
“And one and two and three!” echoed the teacher. I wanted to do what he said. I wanted to do what the others did, but I couldn’t remember what I was like. When we changed clothes a little later and were outside again, Maartje asked if we were all right. I tried to say “I don’t know” as neutrally as possible and crumbled before her eyes. I cried. It didn’t matter. We walked to a place with coffee and she let me talk. About things that had been many and perhaps still were. About voices in my head that sometimes said stern things and maybe still did. About wanting less than you have to, and being able to do less than you want. About juggling with plates and balls and the inexorable gravity.
It was not warm, the terrace was empty, but we drank our coffee outside, on a wooden bench with cushions. “I think I’m weird,” I said. “I don’t,” she said. And we sat there, as the cold slowly lifted from the sky and the sun came out from behind the watery clouds.
2023-09-01 11:31:27
#Floor #panic #attacks #wanting
