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To think.
I slowly walked down the creaking hallway back to the cozy, empty waiting room.
My eyes flicked up to the ornate clock on the wall: one of those giant Pottery Barn contraptions that tells you the time in the most pretentious way possible. It smugly informed me that I had two minutes until I could see my lifeline. My buoy bobbing on the surface of my dark, nebulous thoughts. My lighthouse standing dependably on the rocky shore no matter how severe my mental storm:
My wonderful therapist, Dr. Jennifer Silk.
I sank into one of the cool, leather waiting room chairs and sighed, trying to expel the memory from my lungs. I felt a little proud of myself for being able to jerk my mind out of a full-blown anxiety attack. That meant I was getting better, right?
But you’re not. You had one yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and you just ruined your life by kissing your boss!
I frowned. My anxiety enjoyed tormenting me like this.
I let out an exhale again, trying to detach myself from the fear. But if you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, fear is braided into everything you do.
Before the incident that fused my soul with my fear, my mind worked like a flawless loom. I remember being able to ponder several things at once, feeding every colorful thread of thought into a flawless machine that wove my life into a beautiful, predictable pattern.
But when my anxiety started, it was like a dump truck full of burs had crashed on my mental highway. Every seed of fear tumbled around in my head, hooked into my threaded thoughts, and thickened until it was nothing but a tangled mass of worry and chaotic garbage. This torturous, thorny tumbleweed formed a cage around my mind; a latticework of thoughts where the more I struggled, the tighter it twisted.
The only relief from the bite of my mental bindings was when I talked to Dr. Silk. She had a way of knowing which threads to tug to loosen the knot. Somehow, she knew how to create slack.
I peeked at the clock again.
One minute.
But the fluttering thrummed in my chest like a hummingbird. I was already trapped in the whirlpool. It was only a matter of time before the current pulled me into the neck of the funnel, tightening around my throat like a noose. It was already getting hard to breathe…
Another thing about anxiety was that it could magically slow down and speed up time to make you the most miserable. If I was having fun, it made sure to accelerate the flow of my experiences until I got sucked into the next fear vortex. And whenever I was caught in the vortex, it slowed the winding of the second hand and adrenalized my thoughts so I was drowning in something slow and syrupy—but as fast as possible.
I ran my fingers through my hair.
It didn’t make sense.
It took ordinary things like going to the grocery store and whipped it up into a corrosive concoction with stiff peaks and valleys: one way to do everything “right,” and if I failed to meet those made-up, ridiculous expectations, it was a disaster.
I tipped forward, temples to knees, and focused on breathing.
In, (count to five,) out.
In, (count to six,) out.
You kissed Sawyer! You’re going to get fired—
In, (count to seven,) out.
In, (count to eight,) out.
You’re going to—
In, (count to nine,) out.
In, (count to ten,) out.
You’re…
If anxiety was an element, it would be the opposite of fire because it was weak to air. I could already feel the tide of worry receding from my mind.
As I sat up, dizziness danced through my head. Though, I suppose that’s to be expected when you stop spinning.
