So I’m sure some folks noticed the significant increase in posts this past week. I seemed to be pouring some especially strong pathos onto the sidewalk.  Part of it has to do with my depression, of which most of you are aware. The vast majority of it, though has to do with the mind-breaking panic attacks I’ve been having all week. I’m not talking discomfort and unease, I’m talking gibbering terror, hyperventilation, extreme paranoia, absolute certainty of death, and the fear of losing everyone I love. These have been the strongest anxiety attacks I’ve ever had in my entire life.
For the past week, my life has been nothing but sheer terror followed by moments of calm (and a desperate attempt to return to normalcy), which are eclipsed by sheer terror once again. My heart wants to burst, my brain wants to melt down. I want to collapse into a ball and cry non-stop. I want to hide under my covers and make the world go away. I’m terrified people are going to harm me. Right now, I am having a lucid moment but I don’t know how long it will last before those icy tendrils grip my heart and brain again.
There is this constant chattering underneath my thoughts, a rumble that will not subside, as if a foreshock, or aftershock, is constantly making its presence known. It is this belief that something absolutely horrible is about to happen, something that may destroy my life forever. This buzzing and chattering exists even in my moments of “calm.” My mind has been doing nothing but creating nightmare scenarios, and I’m not talking outlandish ones, but ones that are entirely plausible, and they just won’t stop repeating themselves over and over and over again. I can’t eat without seeing them, I can’t sleep without dreaming of them.
This kind of thing does happen every so often, usually once every few years, but this has been, without a doubt, the absolute worst, on a magnitude I’ve never experienced before. I’m exhausted, I am divided inside, I feel left outside of the world, like I don’t belong, like I’m not welcome. I am in dire fear of the future.