I Don't Want to Be Crazy (10 page)

I am in that familiar seat
with a stranger staring at me
expecting me to tell him all my stories.
This sucks.
I barely get through a sentence
without crying.
Like always, I start at the beginning.
As I give the speech, I think
I might as well make a recording
since I keep having to repeat myself.
I am twenty-one years old.
Blah blah.
I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder
when I was seventeen.
Blah blah.
I have been prescribed blah blah and blah
and now I am back at the beginning
at home
and freaking out.

Serzone 300 mg
is my prize for going back into therapy.

Going to see the new therapist
is a pain in the ass.
I take the train home from work
then the bus or a taxi for a mile.
My father picks me up afterwards,
when my face is puffy from crying
and my clothes are sticky
from all the sweating.

I’m not sure I like this therapist.
He talks too much—
sometimes it’s about his kids,
sometimes about his other patients.
I try to be objective,
but I never see his point.

He tells me he is going to teach me
how to breathe.
He says it is the key
to managing my anxiety.

He gets out from behind his desk
and sits next to me on the couch.
He puts his hand on my stomach
as he counts for me
and tells me to take deep breaths.
I don’t like that he does this,
but I am not sure what to say.

I am in overload.
I know that.
I can rationalize and pick apart
all the things that are wrong—
all the things that are making me freak out,
but that doesn’t make the feeling go away.
I feel like crap.
I have my period.
I am exhausted.
My great-aunt died.
I hate my job.
I feel stuck at home.
One at a time
these things aren’t a problem,
but when they’re piled on
it leads to disaster.

Three steps forward
and two steps back.
It looks like I am making progress,
but I feel the backward pull—
pulling me toward how things used to be.
Now the attacks are snowballing.
One panic attack leads to two, two leads to three
until I am back in the dark place
where I hate everything.

Work sucks.
When I get back from taking the day off
to go to my great-aunt’s funeral,
my boss doesn’t even ask me who died.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t want to have to take the train home
with all those other depressing commuters.
I wish I were at home, in bed,
but instead I am here,
filing and making copies.

A new girl just started in my department.
She looks like a pixie
and moves around the office
with almost no sound.
I know it would be nice
if I offered to show her
around or go over office procedures,
but I don’t have the strength to do
anything for anyone but myself.

Thanksgiving sucks.
We are at another fancy hotel,
except this place is not serene.
There is a glass ceiling
that makes the screaming kids
sound even louder.

The food comes, but I am not interested.
To avoid scrutiny
I work my way around the plate clockwise.
First, turkey.
Fork up.
Take bite.
Fork down.
Take sip of water.
Now, potatoes.

Fork up.
Take bite.
Fork down.
Take sip of water.
Maybe if I move at regular intervals
no one will notice that I am dying.

The more I see this therapist,
the more I dislike him.
Last week I told him
a story about when I felt like a slut,
but he didn’t understand.
I am still a virgin—
how could I feel like a slut?

Today we talk about
how I need to be more organized.
He suggests I get a planner just like his.
He takes it out, shows it to me,
and tells me all the places I can buy it.
He goes on about it for twenty minutes.
I keep trying to change the subject
but he is oblivious.

No one ever tells you
that it’s okay to not like your therapist
and that you don’t have to keep seeing him
just because someone recommended you or
because he takes your insurance.

After a week of trying to figure out
how to dump him,
I leave a message on his
machine, saying that things just aren’t working out
and spend the day wondering
if he thinks I’m passive-aggressive.

I am filled with such sadness
and I am so tired
that I could die.
The only music
I can stand to hear
is Billie Holiday.

I cannot face my friends,
or anyone else,
and I sat for so long in the shower
that my hands are raw and cracked.

I do not feel like myself,
and if this is me,
then something needs to change.

I fear my whole life
will be exactly like this—
seen from behind my eyes,
never touching.

I am scared to sleep.
I am scared to eat.
I am scared to move.
And all this turns my stomach
and reminds me how alone I am
and how pitiful it is
that I need someone to love me,
to wrap me up and make me feel safe,
and how pathetic it is
that I can’t find someone, anyone
to do that for me.

I am waiting
in the waiting room
of the new therapist’s office.

There is a drawing on the wall
of a guy in a strange hat.
This is not an ordinary drawing.
This is a portrait.
I am supposed to know who this is.
I search his face.
Nothing.
When I look at his hat again
I realize it is in the shape of windmill.
This is Don Quixote—
a deluded literary character
who fights for the honor of a woman
who doesn’t exist
and does battle with monsters
that are really windmills.
I’m going to like this therapist.

Each week I get more and more medicated.
On my first visit, the new therapist
raises my dose of Serzone 100 mg.
The next week, I am not any better
and I get another 100 mg.
One more week,
another 100 mg.

600 mg and I am maxed out
and things still suck, only now,
I am having problems with my balance.

Now I must taper off
the same way I went on.
Tuesday, 600 mg.
Wednesday, 500 mg.
Thursday, 400 mg.
Friday, 300 mg.
Saturday, 200 mg.
Sunday, 100 mg.

Celexa 10 mg
will be better than Serzone,
my new therapist says.
We start low
and I work my way up again.
The first week I take 10 mg.
The second week I take 20 mg.
The week after that 30 mg.
My therapist cuts me off at 40 mg.

Ativan 0.5 mg
is sitting in a bottle in my room,
is floating in my wallet,
is crumbling in the back pocket of my jeans.
My therapist prescribed it
for when the attacks become unbearable,
but I don’t want to take it.
I’m scared I will become dependent
and end up worse off than I am now,
but I keep it with me
just in case.

I have the dream again,
this time with Saran Wrap.
I am standing in front of a deli counter
when I realize I have a piece of Saran Wrap in my mouth.
I begin to pull it out.
I feel it unraveling
from somewhere inside my stomach
and dragging up my throat
and out my mouth.
I’m terrified I’m pulling out my intestines.

My parents have taken control of my life.
When I am not at work
my parents lead me around
like a sick animal.
I never go out on the weekends
with friends anymore.
I stay home and watch TV,
but never the news—
it hurts too much.
I don’t bother to call my friends back—
not even Claire.
There is nothing to say.

My mother says, “Get up,
we’re going to a flute concert.”
I don’t want to go to a flute concert.
I don’t want to leave the house.
I don’t want to sit in a room full of people
in the dark
and have to be quiet.
But I do not have it in me to protest.
I get dressed
and we go
and I cry.

My mother says, “Get up,
put on a skirt,
we are going to temple.”
I don’t want to go to temple
and sit quietly and pray.
But I do not have it in me to protest.
At temple I sit next to my mother
with a prayer book closed in my lap
and I cry.

I feel like a mental patient
on leave from the home.
It’s strange.
I spent most of the last few years
trying to get out of going places with my parents,
but now I don’t mind our outings.
Now it is comforting.
Now it is safe.

The therapist says I should keep a log
of when I have panic attacks.
He wants me to write down
where I was, what I was thinking
just before and during the attack,
and how long it lasted.

I don’t like this idea.
It is too much focus
on something I am trying to forget.
I am afraid
that this attention to detail
will only fuel my
anxiety.

I hate that I want to open up
my mouth and empty the bottle of Celexa
down my throat
and feel soft and quiet.

I’m not talking about suicide.
I just wish I were how I was before—
how I was my senior year in high school
when I didn’t care
who liked me and who didn’t,
how I was finally free.
Now I feel more bound than ever—
bound by this disease,
bound to repeat the behaviors
and thoughts
that are killing me.

I am the crazy friend.
Rebecca calls to check up on me
and to see if she should visit.
I am the patient
and she wants to know the visiting hours.
That’s how bad this is—she’ll
even come to Queens.
I don’t want to see anyone.
I just want to sit at home
and watch TV with my sister
and have my parents pour wine for me at dinner.

My therapist and I do breath work.
We stare at each other
from matching green leather chairs.
I shut my eyes and he counts slowly for me.
“Breathe in,
two,
three.
Breathe out,
two,
three.”
I try to focus
on filling my chest up with air
and instead of sucking air in,
I let my stomach balloon out.
I imagine my diaphragm
moving up and down,
like how you shake out a sheet
before you fold it.
“In,
two,
three.
Out,
two,
three.”
Relaxing,
feeling
only
my
breath.
Only
hearing
his
voice.

I wonder what my life would be like
if I’d never had anxiety disorder.
At first I think, shit,
I’d be Miss America.
I’d be the happiest person
with the brightest smile on the face of the earth.
But the more I think about it,
the more scary life without panic seems.
My life has been governed by anxiety
for the last five years.
It fills up my time.
The practice of doing nothing—
of staring at walls and letting my mind go—
is torture.
I don’t know how to live like that.
I only know how to live like this—
with this feeling in my stomach.

But this is no way to live—
fearing everything,
being scared to be me,
to be happy,
to feel pain.

There are so few things left inside me
besides fear.
The thought of having to go back to work—
having to go back out there,
knowing that this is my life,
that I am not happy,
that I expect more,
that I want more,
makes me sick.

When I have a panic attack
the voice in my head says
anything can happen.
I will go insane,
I will die,
I will start screaming,
I will piss all over myself.
I try to tell myself that that voice isn’t real,
but it’s hard.
The voice is very convincing.

I need to find a voice that is stronger—
one that is so rational
that it will cancel the other one out.

What does it take to believe
that I am going to make it?
Whose voice is good enough?
Is my own?
I write a note to myself,
put it in my wallet
and hope.

Where you are
and what you are doing
is something you have done
dozens of times before
without having any problems.

Recognize that you are going to get out of this—
that you always get out of this,
that you are going to live,
that you won’t go crazy.

I am telling you that you will live,
because you always live,
because you are strong
and beautiful.

The therapist and I play a new game.
When I say, “I thought I was going to have a panic attack,”
he says, “So what if you did?”
He is mentally prodding me
from across the room.
I say, “It would suck
and I would think I was going crazy
and I would feel like I couldn’t breathe.”
“And…?” he asks.
I say, “I might pass out.”
“And…?”
I already see where this is going.
It’s a trap.
He is letting me use my words
against myself.
I say, “I’d wake up.”
I hate this game.

I dream that I have cancer.
I go to the gynecologist
and he tells me that I have a week to live.
I don’t understand.
I feel fine.
I have no symptoms.

How could I be carrying around
that much rot and disease
in my uterus and not even know?
I’m too young, I think.
I haven’t done anything yet.
Later in the dream
things get bad quickly.
My parents and sister
rush me to the hospital
because I’m pissing blood.
I’m going to have surgery,
but the doctors don’t think
I have much of a chance.

I lie on a table, under anesthesia.
My body is cold, but my mind is awake.
My father is preparing me for surgery,
but it feels more like for burial.
I am ashamed to be naked in front of him,
but he carefully washes my body
and cleans under my nails
and I scream for him inside my head.

All I can think is, I told you so.
I told you that my panic was real.
I told you that things like this happen.

I have a theory,
I tell my therapist while we talk about
my irrational fears regarding illness
and other catastrophes.
I call it the Post-it theory.
For every fucked-up thing that happens
I make a mental note.
There is a Post-it in my brain
for when Joelle died of meningitis.
There is a Post-it for when
my mother’s friend had a brain tumor.
There are Post-its
based on things I hear in the news
and stories friends tell me.