Every day around 5pm I feel the beginnings of a panic attack. It’s usually when I’m working from home, at the wind up of the day, when meetings disappear from my schedule, and I’m alone with my thoughts again. The panic attacks reappeared after years of dwelling quietly elsewhere. They started during the end of my old job, for rational reasons. They were a sign I had to leave. That was something good about them. The symptoms are different this time, as far as I can remember. Heart beginning to pound into a crescendo, then a relentless drum roll, morphing from rhythm to hum. A drone, perhaps like a raga box, opening its mouth to emit the sound of dread. The unconscious connection between my brain and my lungs powering down, and then gasping for air once my body realised I hadn’t been breathing.
I’ve learned to welcome them as a friend - I try, at least, to let them enter my home and sit down. It’s when I ignore them, forget to ask if they want a glass of water, that they tap at my shoulder like an errant child, peering around my chest with their hands whimpering at my waist. My stomach churns. I feel the acid burning inside me and find it astonishing that the strongest acid known to us exists in a perfectly formed cavity in our torsos. I’ve trained my mind to remain calm-ish. I’ve learned that smoking too much makes them come on more frequently. Covid, another cursed blessing, has forced me to reduce how much I smoke. When the attacks are bad, I feel my arms and legs go numb, then a pain in my chest. I’ve learned to prove to myself that it’s not a heart attack by breathing in deeply. The doctor said that if the pain worsens, that’s not a good sign. Sometimes the pain remains and I scare myself for a moment. Then I breathe again, because I have to, because that is still what my body knows to do even when my mind forgets, and the pain is the same or it slows, and I repeat this again and again and again until it goes.
For a while, I would look at my arms and legs and they would seemingly swell before my eyes. I would be in the shower shaving my legs and see my calves blossom before me, the flesh rising like dough. I’ve become so pale, the colour of atta. I would have to look at myself naked in the mirror, focusing on my legs through the lens of my eyes and not the lens of my racing mind, and stay there until my eyes had convinced me that my legs were the same, that actually over time I’d gained weight, and that this was the new circumference of my calves. And they were beautiful legs, perfectly good legs. I still do this, though my body balloons less frequently now.
I am too scared to go to the gym. To exercise again. And now it makes sense as I write this, because the first time I ever had a panic attack was when I was a swimmer. I had been swimming professionally for years at that point. I’d just had to beg for my spot back on the swim team because I’d taken off one season - one season! - to try crew. When I came back there was a new coach who said I wasn’t dedicated enough and denied me a place. I had to go convince him I was dedicated, that I’d just wanted to try something new. The truth was I’d felt bullied by a cadre of white girls on the team and I’d left for a fresh start. But I loved swimming, I loved the quiet discipline of it. I loved the feeling of my arms cutting through the water, my ankles flexing, the heady flip at the end of the pool to push off and spiral back to the starting block. I always thought I would come back to it. So I begged for my spot back on the team, and the coach assented.
When I got back on the team, I felt like I had fewer friends. I pushed myself hard in training to compensate. I was one of the fastest on the team, killed my first meet of the season. But when I emerged from the water after a race and made my way to the coach, pleased that I’d smashed a previous personal best, he simply looked at me and said ‘what was that?’
After that, things just weren’t the same. I couldn’t go to practice. I didn’t know why, I just couldn’t. And because I couldn’t articulate it, I frustrated my mother, who was paying ridiculous amounts of money for me to attend practice 6 days a week, 3 hours a day. I feel frustration at myself now. I’ve gained so much weight. In some ways, I enjoy it. I like the fullness of my thighs, the rolls on my stomach. But I feel weak. And sometimes I don’t like it, I want the pouch of my lower stomach to disappear as it pushes through my jeans, a small half moon refusing to wane. I sit at home and do nothing. At the beginning of the pandemic I went for 6 mile walks every day. I enjoyed them and the peace of mind they gave me through a period where I was dissociating. Being outside, looking at the Thames, seeing the lights on the other shore, the children walking past me, the people with their dogs, felt good. I gained weight then too, even though I wasn’t eating enough - I had no appetite. It turns out I had hormone problems after coming off the pill. I gained 20 pounds and someone close to me said they were worried about my health. The audacity of it, when I live in a four story walk up and was going for such long walks every day. It wasn’t about my health, it was about appearing anything other than slim.
I think working out would be good for my anxiety. But again, I just can’t seem to do it. I tried to behavioural-science myself into starting. I tried an app. I’ve been told to just do five minutes, and see how much I enjoy it. I’ve been told it closes an anxiety loop, brings closure to the moment. But I just don’t want to. I’ve asked myself why so many times. But it’s the same as swimming before - I just can’t. Do I need closure, somehow? Maybe I need to email that old shithead coach and tell him how I feel. What he did to me. But it’s not just him, is it - he was a trigger, nothing more. I don’t want to give more power than he deserves. I don’t think he is worth enough, don’t want to make him a main character in the story of my life.
Maybe it was the shock of being denied something I thought would always be mine. Maybe he told me a new story about myself, that I wasn’t dedicated. It was a shock to me. In almost every area of my life, if I think something is important I will throw myself into it. Loyalty is a value I put much stock in. Commitment is loyalty to something - to craft, to excellence, to the pursuit. When I want to know something I have 20 tabs open. When I was at practice I pushed myself so hard. Every time I think of the things I used to do I blow myself away. You would, too - an hour in the gym followed by 8000 yards in the pool. Practice before school, classes with wet hair, competitions afterward, followed by late nights studying for exams, cooking my own simple dinners.
And the thing was, I was shit at the beginning. I was the slowest on the team. I got in by a miracle. I got lapped every practice. But I went, every day, and I did the reps and I ran the miles and in two seasons I was moving up groups. I kept pace with the boys. I was placing at meets. I got my varsity letter. I became captain of the team. And then I left, because the pool was no longer a safe place, I no longer laughed hanging off the ledges between sets with the girls, we didn’t talk in the showers anymore. I know I don’t remember much. I probably, definitely said the wrong things, reacted in unhelpful ways. But what I remember is the feeling of being different, and alone, and when I left and joined crew I found new people and a new sense of enjoyment. I liked working my way up from the third boat to the first in a season. I beat everyone in the six mile runs we did. How could I not be committed to the things I wanted to do?
I hate that I have been believing this story about myself for so long. That a part of me agreed with that coach when everything I could see with my eyes told me otherwise. And how cruel, to say that to a teenager, an impressionable kid! I was fifteen, FIFTEEN. I wasn’t training for the Olympics. Even then I knew I would never get there, because as much as the Olympics are about hard work, they’re also about luck of the biological draw, but I never wanted to get there, either. I just wanted to be better than I was yesterday, and that’s the god honest truth. That’s how I live my life now, too - my north star moves but it is always there. I try new things and realise what I like and don’t like, what I’m good at and what I’m not. I learn about myself through the act of doing and then I just know what to try next. If it resonates with me, I continue on that path.
There are so many forks in the road. I take them one at a time. I don’t have a five year plan. My dad always told me ‘do what you love and the money will follow.’ Capitalist, but true. I’ve followed my gut and done what felt right and I’ve ended up here, in a wonderful place, with knowledge and skills and experience that, when I look back and connect the dots, make sense. I was meant to end up here. I was meant to be this person. And I didn’t get here by planning the whole journey out. I went out in the city and got lost. I wandered into relationships and jobs and wandered back out again. I meandered into a flat with a view that mirrored the one I had when I was eight and have stayed here for six years. It’s time to leave soon, I feel. The path is turning into a place I don’t want to go and I’m about ready to switch tracks.
I don’t know if this will help me begin to work out. The truth is that I have to do it. I know that the path I want to turn on is the one where I feel strong, where I can lug a suitcase up four flights of stairs and only take a few moments to catch my breath, to be able to ride my hips fluid over my lover’s lap, to feel a different kind of sexy. I can appreciate the body I’m in and resent the feeling of disliking it. How could I dislike it when it is so luxurious, when I can feel the ampleness of it? When studying art history we learned about the emotional power of a curve, how something about them automatically conveyed sensuousness, movement, life. Again - passion. Animus. The desire to be alive. I don’t want to erode this, I don’t want to become smaller by being smaller. I don’t want to subject myself to the court of other people’s eyes, I don’t want to give people the power to make me feel beautiful, desirable. I can desire myself, in a way. I don’t want to let anyone take that from me, because I think it’s important to want yourself.
I started writing again after so long. I switched paths, or at least decided to try another one, by taking up screenwriting. I watch a lot of Netflix with the subtitles on. I can’t help but pay attention to the dialogue, learning what I admire, what I think is too discursive, the clever things you can do with sound. I started this blog because I thought long form might be a better medium for my current thinking. A friend suggested I try writing a lyric essay. I’m getting excited by what I’m writing and want to write more. I feel it bubble up as I speak to people at work, my friends, the urge to tell them my theories and ideas. To share, to see their reactions, to engage them. I want to tell the whole world what I’m thinking. So I think this is the right track to stay on, for now. I can criss-cross between paths and pave a new hybrid and it’s really all up to me. If I want to do it, my body will. Today I lay on my dirty kitchen floor without a mat and did five minutes of yoga. I felt good and wanted to do more. I stopped. I hope the desire to do more will stay with me through tomorrow, and that I will act on it. If the track works, I’ll do it again, and again, and maybe then I will be off on a little adventure to somewhere I don’t know but look forward to meeting.