To Be a Champion

It was the summer after my freshman year of college, or as I like to call it the summer after rock-bottom. The whole year was pretty traumatizing, but second semester was where everything changed. I still don’t know why it happened, but it did. Every night was a sleepless one. Eventually, I became numb; I just remember not feeling anything, not being sad, not being happy–just being nothing.

Right now, I’m about to get on a plane, pretty much forced by my therapist. I dreaded this for days on end, but here I was, and I had no choice but to do it. Everything felt like a challenge today: get to the airport, go through security, wait at the gate, and face the fear of going back to where it all went bad.

I sat at the gate for what felt like an eternity and a half. I ripped off parts of my nails, went on my phone to check Facebook and Instagram. I took the time to think about what my dad says whenever he goes on a plane. He says he thinks of the time as a period to relax. I slid off my shoes, each one with the other foot and felt them breathe. I was flying to Michigan from New York (a.k.a. the only place I want to live for the rest of my life) as an exposure task just for the weekend.

Dr. Clark Goldstein, my therapist, has been assigning me exposure tasks each week for the last 3 months. Exposure tasks are basically things I have to do that make me so freaking anxious. Then, Dr. Clark makes me sit there and deal with it. He’s a sweet man always with a Kippot on his head. The first few meetings we did small things like shaking my head back and forth really fast.

“Now I want you to sit in your chair and put your head in between your legs. Let it hang, and when I say go you are going to lift your head up as fast as you can.”

“Ok, I’m ready.”

I sat with my torso and head down, it wasn’t that bad. I did feel my head getting heavier though. After what I think was about a minute I heard, “Go!” I flung my body up as fast as I could.

“Good, sit there for a few seconds…now, what symptoms do you feel?”

“Dizzy, nauseous, a little out of breath.”

“Okay, good and now on a scale from 1-8 how anxious did this make you and how close was it to a panic attack?”

“Um, 6 and 4.”

After rating it, he would give me more exercises and I would have to do them 3 times a day.

After a month of that, which at the time I felt was nonsense, he made me recall where many of my panic attacks took place over the past year, and we wrote them down even if I had no idea why I panicked there. I have generalized anxiety disorder, as well as panic disorder which means its completely random, and I don’t know what causes it, it actually sucks.

He made me do things like going to a fancy restaurant, to watching a scary movie, to going on a rollercoaster, to taking a train to the city by myself, to this. The biggest exposure task I’ve done. Going back to Michigan and staying by myself, sitting with my anxiety by myself and have panic attacks by myself. This was the last exposure before the start of my sophomore year.

My thoughts start to overflow my mind; it’s hot in here. The beat of my chest picks up. I unclip my bra and slyly stick it in my backpack. I remember mom visiting me last year and yelling at me for doing this at a restaurant. Something in my head told me it would make breathing easier if there was nothing squeezing my ribs together.

My family was used to me acting up in places. Flapping my arms, panting, finding something cold to rub on my chest, basically making a complete fool out of myself. Neither of my parents REALLY understood my anxiety. Sometimes, it felt like they thought I was just overreacting. I have been this way since I was 9, but it has never been as bad as it was last January.

I wonder why it had to happen that way. A way that made everything in the world seem like a thing, it was just there. Nothing appeared to have a purpose. I was scarred, and it made me terrified to go back. It’s time to board.

I find my seat. The loudspeaker comes on and starts talking about all the procedures that we need to know in case of an emergency. I have probably been on over 100 planes and heard that schpiel a billion times, but if something ever happened, I doubt I would know what to do.

My feet go numb from hanging off the seat, and they get that pins and needle feeling, which at this point I don’t really mind as it’s something to keep my mind focused on. It’s something to distract me from the fact that I was going back. Back to the place where I was at my lowest.

I put in my headphones and tried to choreograph a dance for 3 girls on a stage in my mind. I have watched the show “Dance Moms,” as well as dance videos on YouTube for years and I love it. Sadly, I’m not so coordinated, but I love to dance for fun anyway. By that, I mean in my room in front of the mirror.

I imagine the three girls each in a white dress doing pirouettes and leaps all across the floor. At the same time, I’m thinking about my breathing and make sure it’s steady.

My mind drifts; I pick up my backpack, reach into the front pocket, take out a pack of gum, bite half of it and stick the other half back into the pack. I told myself that I was only allowed one more piece on the flight. It’s not that I like the taste of it; it is more of a safety thing. I had convinced myself that it helped, but Dr. Clark has made it perfectly clear that it doesn’t.

I think about one of the many times I had to leave a party last year, because I didn’t have a piece of gum. I would ask the girls I was with and then the few boys around me if they had a piece, and when they didn’t, I would Uber home.

I remember one time we were at a party with a fraternity we didn’t usually mix with. A boy was holding something that looked weird, so I asked what it was and he put it to my nose. It was smelling salts. I walked around asking for gum– well more like begging. I told people what had happened, looking for some comfort; I got the same response from 3 boys. A laugh.

“Someone put smelling salts to my nose.”

The kid laughed.

“Who cares? You can literally buy smelling salts from Walgreens.”

I didn’t care where you could buy them. I didn’t have any gum, and to me, that meant I was not safe.

We take off and I think the hardest part is done. The anticipation is what gets to me the most. I made it onto the plane, so I was going to be okay. But this time is different, because I’m going to be alone all weekend.

I am on this plane alone.

I will land and be alone for three days.

I will be anxious. I will panic. I will throw up.

I will embarrass myself.

I won’t be able to go back to school, I will have to stay home with Mom and Dad, and I will have failed.

I know I have to fight my anxious thoughts.

“Nothing bad is going to happen, I can do this.”

I can do this because I’ve done it before; I’ve sat through a thousand panic attacks. I worked my ass off to get where I am now. I’m not going back. Once I get there and finish what I have been dreading all summer, I’ll know. I’ll know I’ll be able to go back to school. I’ll be able to be a champion, because only “Those who stay will be champions.”

I know what’s coming, and I know there is no going back. I feel the fear that I have no control, I know I am going to panic. The heat in my blood triggers the rubber band around my lungs. I put my hair up to feel the quick satisfaction of air on the back of my neck. I reach out of my seat and twist the three fans to face me. I put my hand under my shirt and rub my chest with one hand and my stomach with the other.

I pull the breathing app up on my phone and watch the colors change as it tells me to inhale for 5 seconds. Hold. Then out for 5 seconds. I think about how it can’t last long. I know this because Dr. Clark says that the maximum amount of time a panic attack can last is 15 minutes.

I give up on the breathing app. I pull up candy crush and move two pieces until I give up on that. I suck in my breath as hard as I can. I pinch my pointer finger with my thumb, breathing loudly. Thank G-d the girl next to me has her earphones in, even though I desperately want to turn to her and say, “Can you tell me I’ll be okay?”

I can’t breathe. I press the button above me to ask for assistance. A lady comes by and leans down.

“Hi, sorry. Can I have a bottle of water?”

“Yes, 3 dollars.”

I wait 2 minutes and she comes by. I pray that it’s cold. It’s a tiny bit colder than room temperature, but I put it to my cheeks anyway, then to the back of my neck, then to the veins on my wrists before taking a sip.

I think of the night in the hotel this past January when I went weeks with constant anxiety, so my parents flew up. I stayed with them in that hotel room for weeks. I remember my mom and dad staring at me then each other, as I paced around the room with a plastic bag of ice cubes on my face.

I remember hysterically crying, “I can’t do this anymore.” I hunched over and dry-heaved as my dad rubbed my back. I screamed wanting to remove whatever was inside my head, inside my body. My parents looked scared. My dad held me in a way he never has and my mom’s teeth were clenched. I could tell, because the extra skin on her neck was now gone. I don’t think they ever really understood until that night. I don’t think I understood until that night how bad it really was.

I take the little orange bottle out of the small pocket of my backpack from under the seat in front of me. I read the label and make sure it's my Xanax and not my Prozac or Trazadone. I put the little yellow pill on the back of my tongue and take 4 big swigs just to make sure it went down.

I imagined the medication swimming through my blood and slowing my heart and thoughts down. I think about how that was as terrible as it was going to get. It’s going to go away now. I closed my eyes and imagined what I was going to do when I got to the hotel. I could lie in bed, relax, order in some good food, and watch a happy movie.

Thirty-four minutes have gone by since we took off. We were almost there. I wondered if this was actually going to help. I knew why Dr. Clark thought it would; it would make going back to school less scary. But I knew I would be scared either way. I did not want to go back to that state. The state where if I wasn’t panicking, I was anxious, and if I wasn’t anxious, I was emotionless.

I looked over to the girl next to me. Her nails were painted a dark blue, and she read a book that rested on the tray table in front of her. I thought of taking out my “Riding the Wave” workbook but didn’t. Maybe it would spark an anxiety attack.

I ordered it for therapy and had homework every day. It helped me rearrange my thoughts. When I panic, I am supposed to think, “I have panicked over 100 times and I have gotten through each and every one.” I have written those types of thoughts down in that book a million times, but in the moment, I don’t care. I feel like I’m in danger or I’m dying during every single one.

I started to relax, I thought about the past few months and how I was better than I’ve ever been. I had done things I never knew I could. Four months ago I had never been on a rollercoaster, I had never watched a scary movie, I hadn’t sat through a panic attack all by myself and I hadn’t had an attack in two years without taking a Xanax. But I can do these things now.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing soon.”

I slide my shoes on, and the rubber band around my chest has slowly loosened. What I had been working up to all summer had begun, but unlike before, I knew I could do it. I was forced to be anxious this summer, so many times that I knew I would be okay. Every bad day was worth every good one. Last year had led me to Dr. Clark who was “The best of the best” and now I knew I would not feel this way forever. As hard as it was, I was thankful for rock bottom.