how do I panic

I never really understood what someone meant when they told me they had a panic attack. Like… it just… attacked? Did you provoke it? Did you fight back? Do I need to call for help?

Apparently—yes—to everything.

I’ve been, for much of my life, “toxically masculine.” At least I think that’s what I’m supposed to call it. Scars are cool. Ooo, I’m bleeding! Composure, composure, keep it together. Sacrifice the body. Get the job done. Feelings aren’t facts. Rub some dirt on it. Gloves? No. Crying? No use. Safety? Third. Pain? Necessary.

Don’t worry, I’m cured now. The woke mob saved me.

I can’t tell if those tendencies were handed down by society, my peers, media, or are simply inherent masculinity. It’s likely a combination of all of that, and more. I usually have an opinion about this stuff, but I’ve decided not to today, and for the foreseeable future.

I’ve been exposed to both camps: remove all masculine traits you are evil and should not be allowed to have that power; and: these are God given and what women want need us to be like, you should embrace the strength you were gifted.

I hope somebody is right, cause I’m just confused.

I don’t think pro-masculine campers would allow me to admit that I had a panic attack. I also don’t think the anti-masculine campers would accept me into their club, cause I still think panic attacks are dumb—an emphatically childish dumb—like that’s not a thing, get over it you wimp. I suppose it’s possible that I’ve had one before and was unaware of the symptoms. Of my life threatening tendencies, one is to chronically repress. As a complimentary syndrome, I developed a habit of laughing off any scrapes I have with death.

My brain has a built in forgettermabobthingy which, when activated, will delete scenes to insure I can live in my delusion long enough to believe all is well, I’ve made good decisions. I don’t know who is in control of that mabobthingy, but he’s got some strange motives. I still have regrets. I wish he would delete those. Instead, details that I probably could use get redacted, and some things are completely sharpied out of my history.

Of my half histories, this one is my least favorite.

One beautiful spring day in Miami I awoke from a medically induced coma (it was a short one, don’t freak out). My parents were there. They were rightfully freaked out. A doctor was there too. He was pissed. I wasn’t there, I don’t remember waking up. The doctor allegedly yelled at me. My parents probably did too, in between sobs of gratitude that I was still alive.

I wish I could tell you the whole story, but I don’t remember it. I made some mistakes, I made some more mistakes, they piled into a blurred deathly cocktail. I woke up days later.

The next thing I did, after my phone was returned to me, was brag to some friends that I was in the hospital. I was making a joke out of it. It wasn’t funny. It’s disgusting to be living in the same body that does things like that. I don’t feel like the same person now, but that doesn’t absolve me of those actions. I ignored the friends who knew I was there because I suspected they were the ones who brought me there, and they were probably justifiably a mixture of frightened and furious with me.

I don’t remember the events, but I distinctly remember the feeling. Apathy. A depth of apathy that could only be explained by pure empty, something nihilistic dread couldn’t come close to. Nihilism has something to argue, it acknowledges that there is a belief somewhere, that you believe nothingness to be your guidance. This wasn’t a day of belief. I felt indifferent about being alive. Everyone seemed to care. Except for me.

Everyone around me was afraid, but I seemed to be more bothered with what people might think about me. I wanted to leverage the coolness of being comatose without frightening everyone too much, revealing that I was a loose cannon. Everyone already knew I was unhinged, this was irrefutable proof. I tried to salvage my image. Those friendships deteriorated.

I wasn’t suicidal at the time. It wasn’t worth the effort, or the pain, to plan out and execute. I was lazy. I didn’t care enough to make it happen. A couple friends seemed to care, but they couldn’t do anything about my condition. Much of their care, I realized later, was selfish. They liked me, but couldn’t be complicit in my self destruction. It wasn’t fair, they shouldn’t care more about my life than me. I knew it, but was also unable to do anything about it. My outbursts tapered off, to some degree, but I was still headed downhill. My descent only became more lonely as time dragged on.

In between fits of uncontrollability, I think I was probably a decent guy. I somehow still had friends, I miraculously still had a girlfriend. Some of my friends were insulated by ignorance. They heard about it, but didn’t really get all the details, and I looked healthy and lively. My girlfriend still saw the best in me, and tolerated the worst. I lived a sort of double life: one of exuberance and drive, the other of despair and indifference. I even got a well-to-do job managing a non-profit during my decline. All exterior indications showed growth. Inside, the rot knew the truth. The whole story appeared as joke, an evil joke. I was no longer laughing.

Too many things happened between that decline and now. Crazy fantastic unbelievable things. Things I never could have asked for. A life I didn’t imagine was possible. Beliefs added, then shattered, then built again. Experiences that warrant overblown flamboyant emphasis. I was given, then taken. Found, then lost. Embraced. More scrapes with death. More people who cared, really cared, who knew. A shift. An epic story that culminated with a desire to live. All of it, remembered.

Today, I tell more good stories than bad. A few nights ago, I was living a bad story.

I called a friend. I needed help. I was spiraling again. I get in these moods sometimes, those kind of negative feedback moods, where I can’t figure out what there is to do about how terrible I feel, so it just feeds upon itself into a vortex of doubt and demonic possession. We talked, I felt a little better. We texted, I stopped feeling as much better.

I was confused. I couldn’t decide if I should dig—feel all the feelings to their deepest depths—or tolerate the experience at its current level. There was an incessant wimpyness that wanted me to override the feelings with positivity tropes. I don’t think anybody could have helped. As part of the demonic feedback loop, I make sure to sabotage the person helping so I can believe that nobody could ever help, and I should just manage these feelings myself. It worked.

I was soon DIY diagnosing myself for mental disorders on the internet.

I found one appropriate for my current mood enhanced by my inaccurate history, something schizophrenic. I broke, crying myself into a paranoid fetal positioned rocking chair. I lost, or chose to lose, the ability to control my hands. I watched them contort as if they weren’t mine. I prepared for hallucinations. I knew where they would come from if they were to come—up the stairs. I knew how they would walk, what their smiles would look like, how their grin would say: I’m here for you. How they would hunch and move smoothly, effortlessly. How they would approach without hurry, a gait that displayed assurance. And the eyes… how they would beam a rigid, unblinking stare that said inevitable, a deliberate overture that in all definitions could say comfort, but in understanding meant: I am you, you are watching me take you. And how petrified I would be in validation of how I felt, finally personified, how I would crave to be taken.

My imagination refueled the experience. I phased in and out of an understanding of what was occurring. I debated arresting the spiral, then too quickly was back in it, further convincing me that it would continue. I remember several returns to sanity, every time both convincing me that I could, and couldn’t, stop. One of those times, it stopped. I choked back a few more resurgences. I suppressed the temptation to relent again. I was on the other end, more sane than insane.

It was short. The feeling was longer than I can describe. I wish I could fully capture what those sensations were. I still feel remnants of them. I fear that these were inspired by my fascination with altered mental states, and I could be inspiring the same in others by sharing my experience. When someone is as enthralled by the human experience as I am, it becomes all too easy to glorify the pain.

If a panic attack was what happened that night, and I am to have more in this newfound life of mine, I almost wish I could go back to the days of emptiness. Almost.

I was panicking about the possibility that I will have to live with this, now that I care so unconditionally to live. That I am me, embracing all the unhidden versions of me, and I have to face all that is contained in that, hidden and futures too—all that I am, meat packaged and gushing scarlet dementia—unsure of what, or if anything, really separates my physicality from my psychology, my actions from my imagination. What defines this experience, and what destroys it. How much control I really have. Where the land mines are, what simple description could trigger a dissolution. What identity is mine to uphold. What memories I can’t let go. What of me I really can hold onto. And what stories need to be told.