A Talk And True Story About Going From Panic To Awareness

David White,

A poet and philosopher,

When asked,

How do you know when you're on the right path,

Said,

You know you are on the right path when the path disappears.

I have a story I'd like to share with you about that.

My experience of the path quite literally disappearing.

I was in my early 20s,

Living in Columbus,

Ohio,

And I felt like I was on top of the world.

Everything was going right in my life.

For the first time ever,

Really.

I was in college.

I had a job at a bookstore,

And I'd just been promoted.

I had friends.

I felt completely safe in my life,

A feeling that I had not had years before.

Everything felt right,

Like I was on the right path.

I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to study in college yet,

But that was okay.

I knew it would come.

I had a new boyfriend who was absolutely adorable and kind,

And he offered for my birthday in mid-August to take me to Yellow Springs,

Ohio,

Near Antioch College,

To a beautiful park,

John Bear State Park.

We would hike,

And then we would have lunch,

And we would celebrate in a very quite romantic way,

I thought.

So on the drive there,

I was thrilled.

I was wearing my cool hiking gear,

Feeling good,

Feeling the wind from the window hitting my face.

I watched the trees go by as we drove.

I watched the other cars zoom by.

And then it happened.

I lost my breath.

My lungs felt like they were going to explode.

My lungs felt like they were caving in.

I couldn't feel my fingers or my toes,

And I worried that the blood was no longer moving in my body.

I was sure I was dying.

I tried so hard to breathe,

To fight against it,

But everything inside me felt like it was falling apart.

I didn't want to inconvenience this new boyfriend,

This kind new boyfriend,

But I told him,

We need to pull over right now.

I don't know,

But I might need to go to the emergency room.

Over the last couple of months,

I had been having recurring panic attacks,

Moments where I felt like I was truly sick,

Dying,

And it would hit me like a wave out of nowhere in the calmest of moments.

It made no sense,

And because it made no sense,

I was convinced that the doctors were wrong.

There had to be something wrong with me,

And they just didn't know what it was.

I had to have some mysterious illness that would probably take me out at any moment.

It had to be the case because when I was younger,

My life was incredibly hard.

I had endured so much bullying and dropped out of high school and fought depression,

And now I was fine.

I was absolutely fine,

And now this was happening.

If it would have happened back then,

It would have made sense,

But my life was comfortable.

So this boyfriend,

Kind as he was,

Asked me what I wanted him to do.

He was prepared to take me to the emergency room,

But as I looked outside,

I felt my breath slowly coming back.

I felt the ground underneath me again,

And I told him I thought I could carry on.

When we got to the park,

There was a wide field.

It was getting really hot,

And we realized that we'd forgotten to bring bottled water,

So we decided just to go on the short path,

A nice little loop about a mile and a half or so.

So we began to walk,

And we walked,

And we walked,

And time went on,

And it got hotter,

And we laughed,

And we walked,

And then after a while,

We realized this is not feeling like a loop.

It didn't seem like anything was familiar,

And we were a little worried that we were on the wrong path.

We didn't have cell phones at that time,

Which probably dates me,

But because we didn't have cell phones,

All we had to go by was the time,

And we'd been walking for a half hour,

And then we walked for 40 minutes,

And then 45 minutes,

And then we realized that we were most definitely on the wrong path,

And for the first time since I met this guy,

We began to gripe at each other a little bit.

I was particularly tired because the panic attacks would wear me out.

They felt very physically taxing,

And so I asked him,

Why did you not pay attention?

He knew I was out of sorts,

And he said,

Well,

You weren't paying attention either,

And we started arguing,

A mild little argument,

But an argument nonetheless,

And we continued to walk,

And no panic rushed in my mind,

Even though logically this would make sense.

There was no panic as we continued to walk and continued to find nothing familiar,

And increasingly no signs.

It was possible that we weren't even on a path,

So we turned around,

And trying the best we could,

We retraced our steps,

Knowing that we had quite a long trek ahead of us.

Eventually,

Because the sun was so hot,

And it felt like we were walking inside of a frying pan,

We both got so tired that we were no longer able to argue,

And I began to think about the panic attack I had had,

And I began to wonder,

Why?

If it was true,

If what the doctor said was true,

And they really were psychosomatic attacks,

Why had they not hit me when my life was more difficult,

When I was in survival mode,

The day that I got jumped by three girls who cracked open my forehead and left me with a permanent scar above my eyebrow?

Why didn't I have panic when I was being bullied?

And I began to think about this as I walked,

And we walked in silence,

And I really couldn't come to a conclusion,

But what I did come to was a beautiful opening at the edge of the woods that led to the field that had greeted us when we first came to the park.

My new boyfriend and I rushed to the field,

And we fell down on our backs in the field,

Looking up at that bright,

Bright sun,

And closing our eyes and just relishing in the fact that we were done.

We had made the hike,

And we laughed at how much we had argued,

And we laughed at our own mistakes,

And as we were laughing,

I felt a little drop of rain,

Like wet silk on my palm,

And then I felt more rain,

And it was so soft,

A misty-like rain,

And we both just stayed there and felt it all,

And my body was so relaxed,

And I was so at ease,

Lifted up by the ground and nourished by the sky.

In that moment,

I realized what I had been trying to figure out.

I realized that in this beautiful moment and in the increasing number of beautiful moments in my life,

I was feeling something I had never felt before.

I was comfortable,

I was grateful,

And because of that,

A story in my mind was telling me that it would soon end,

That the ground would crack beneath my feet and swallow me whole.

I was afraid that what I had would be lost,

And that I was too comfortable,

And not necessarily deserving of that comfort,

But in that moment,

I was so tired and so receptive and so ready to just let what is be,

And I reached for my boyfriend's hand,

And somehow I knew we'd be together for a long time.

That boyfriend,

Now my husband,

Of almost 20 years,

Was with me as I sought counseling and wrote about my panic and explored my life story on the page,

And what I realized in the journey,

In the years that followed,

Was that creativity and the human ability to create a story,

A story based in experience often,

A story that reflects the difficulties,

The true difficulties of the world,

Because this is a hard world to navigate sometimes.

The creative energy that fed a story that nothing good lasts was circulating in my mind when things were starting to get better for me.

It took a while to really be able to articulate this,

But once I realized it,

I realized the power of creativity and story,

And I began to tell myself new stories.

I began to tell others new stories,

And while the world is tricky and difficult at times,

I've learned that the good moments are worth absorbing,

And the difficult moments are not what we want to wait for.

They simply are.

So using our creative energy to tell ourselves a new story is something akin to a superpower that I was just beginning to tap that day in the rain,

And as I moved forward in life with my new partner,

I realized that I was on the right path.

There was nothing definite before me,

No guarantee that there would be goodness and comfort,

No guarantee that there would be peril and difficulty,

But I was moving forward.

I was on my path.

When we're on our path,

We know,

And things from our past may come up to haunt us,

But they're just stories,

Because ultimately,

All we truly have is what's here,

And all we can truly do is move forward.