16 minute read
WELL DONE! Essays, Memoirs, and True Stories ANXIETY by Angela Patera
ANXIETY by Angela Patera
I wake up drenched in sweat, paralyzed by a sense of impending doom. I struggle to pry open my eyelids and look over at Jasmine’s bed. She is still asleep, her long wavy hair splayed out like the tendrils of a doll-sized Medusa. It is all so quiet. For a moment I wonder if I have gone deaf, like that morning after a sludge metal gig in my late teens when I woke up to two broken eardrums, blood leaking through my ears and absolute silence. I shake off the haunting memory, realizing that my hearing is intact. When I manage to focus, the faint a-symphony of my neighborhood emerges. The distant hum of cicadas, the sound of neighbors arguing about a misplaced rubbish bin and the low murmur of the nearby highway. These familiar morning sounds offer reassurance that nothing of cosmic significance has taken place during the night. I can hear Nico singing Sunday Morning in my head. No work for me, no school for Jasmine.
As I reach for my phone, the news websites inform me of a world teetering on the verge of chaos. News stories of calamity, tragedy, violence, suffering and fear flash before my eyes. I feel the familiar grip of panic.
The horrors of the world outside seem irrelevant within the confines of my daughter’s bedroom. The walls are painted a soft shade of baby blue. The shelves of the bookcases are overflowing with books, stuffed toys, dolls, materials for arts and crafts. It smells of lavender, strawberry lip balm and the kitten-ish smell of children. I remind myself I have to stay alive to protect her from the malevolence that lurks beyond the room's haven: Accidents; Disease; Trauma; Emotional and physical abuse; Natural phenomena; Pedophiles; Poverty; Famine; War. No matter how much I struggle to shield her from life's uncertainties, I know deep inside that I can’t wield the power to protect her. Life is pretty random and elusive. Life is wildly improbable, as Margarita Karapanou used to say. This realization has woven its way into the fabric of my being from a very young age.
Of course, this is no extraordinary morning. In fact, this morning is like countless others that have come before it, unremarkable and yet laden with possibilities. Every night I struggle to sleep, tossing and turning until the early morning hours. Every night, I find myself caught in the familiar embrace of half-sleep, a realm that straddles the line between wakefulness and dreams. It is as though I am trapped in a twilight state, where reality and imagination intertwine. The sounds of the neighborhood filter into my consciousness. I realize I am asleep but I am awake at the same time, half-listening, keeping my good eye open. The streets come alive with the distant hum of traffic from the highway, the faint chatter and giggles of teenagers smoking dope in the neighborhood playground, and the occasional barks of neighboring dogs. Sometimes I listen to the sounds of the neighborhood or I smell the pungent aroma of dope and at the same time I become a character in a movie I have seen countless times before, an extra in the background, observing the familiar storyline unfold. Other times, I am an observer in a book I’ve read, suggesting ways to alter the plot. Most of the time, I listen to music in my sleep, whole albums playing on my mind’s media player, albums that I’ve recently listened to or albums that have stayed with me since my adolescence.
Jasmine says I often sing in my sleep, a testament to the peculiarities of our family’s nocturnal creativity. Jasmine is a nocturnal pianist; every now and then she sleepwalks towards the living room, sits carefully on the stool by the piano, her fingers gracefully dancing across the keys, her eyes fixed on the Van Gogh poster right above the piano. Sleep has always been problematic in this family.
Perhaps it's a hereditary trait, passed down through generations like a family heirloom, like my great grandmother’s diamond ring. My mother, the matriarch of this peculiar lineage, never seemed to sleep when I was a child. In the dark of night, I would find her moving about like a nocturnal wanderer, like the opossum of the household. In those odd hours, I would stumble upon her engaged in a myriad of perplexing activities. She would be in the kitchen, making an American-style cheesecake; or she would be sitting on the balcony crafting delicate jewelry and smoking a cigar. Sometimes she would be in her study, reading a book or she would sit on her rocking chair, knitting a never-ending blanket. Every morning she would wake up like clockwork at seven, brew some super strong coffee, get me ready for school and go to work.
Sometimes, I wonder whether coffee is to blame for our familial sleep-related woes. I entered the realm of daily coffee consumption at the tender age of four. My parents never questioned the wisdom of fuelling a preschooler with caffeine before heading to nursery school.
And so it goes: my coffee obsession blossomed with each passing year. By eight, I was no stranger to the art of enjoying another cup of coffee after my supper. The increasing responsibilities and demands that come with adolescence added another two cups of coffee to my daily intake. By the time I graduated from university, I was on at least ten cups of coffee per day. Impossible though it may sound, at some point I had to quit coffee for a good five months after more than two decades of daily consumption.
Half way through my pregnancy, hyperemesis gravidarum reached a peak, making the consumption of coffee impossible. I was exhausted, nauseous, and dehydrated and so I decided to go cold turkey. The withdrawal symptoms I experienced looked like something out of Trainspotting and led me to the emergency room. There, the stern-looking doctors issued a grave warning about early contractions. "If you want to reach that 36-week mark, kick the habit," they admonished. I had a difficult pregnancy including mandatory bed rest but wrestling with the beast of caffeine withdrawal made it exhausting. A mere four hours after giving birth, still dizzy from the profuse blood loss and the pain medication, I asked for a cup of the best cappuccino they could offer. Holding my baby in my arms, I sipped the hot cappuccino and decided that life was good. I had to live and fight for this baby.
During the first completely sleepless nights with a newborn, it occurred to me that insomnia and anxiety were woven into the fabric of my family for many generations. An elusive anxiety disorder must have plagued my parents and grandparents throughout their lives. My grandparents were both afflicted with the worst case of PTSD because of World War Two. My mother was the sole survivor of a horrific train wreck when she was a teenager. This inter-generational anxiety was passed from one generation to the next, along with other traits like pale skin and high cholesterol. Yet, a strange aversion towards seeking help of any kind –therapy, counseling or medication-was a common trait among them all.
It’s not that I haven’t tried. In the depths of my turmoil, I tried therapy. Cognitive- behavioral therapy. Gestalt therapy. Dialectical behavior therapy. I tried them all despite being frowned upon by my parents. I spent a full day’s pay on 45 minutes with a therapist. It was a complete disaster. I found sitting on an armchair baring my soul, bawling my eyes out or spilling my secrets to a complete stranger utterly absurd. Their advice sounded painfully obvious and simplistic. I was never told something I hadn’t already known. Of course I am stuck in a dead-end job. Of course I have trusted people that shouldn’t have been trusted. Of course I have neurotic tendencies. Of course I am obsessive. Of course I have low self-esteem. Of course my phobias won’t let me explore my full potential. Of course I have taken a wrong turn at some point. Of course my migraines are essentially psychosomatic. Of course I have postnatal depression. Of course I have some sort of anxiety disorder. Of course I have self-medicated myself to treat my migraines and of course I have abused pain medication. The therapists seemed to be able to scratch the surface and suggest the obvious. Leaving my job or taking a sabbatical break to travel around the world or breaking up with my partner to deeply explore my options were easier said than done. I wanted to scream. How would I support myself –and later on my family- financially without a job? How would I explain the conspicuous gap (taken-to-travel-the-world) in my CV to a prospective future employer? How would hurting my partner’s feelings to date other men and women improve our relationship? Who would look after my kid if I decided to focus on myself and reach my potential?
When I was working on my master’s thesis, I found out I had a complex endocrinal condition involving my adrenal glands and my thyroid that played havoc on my body. It would make me bloat and shrink; it would keep me awake for days on end; but it also endowed me with a superhuman ability to work at an extremely fast pace, as if I was on amphetamines. It prevented deep sleep but it made me very efficient and productive. I was on a never-ending adrenaline rush. It would make my eyes look bulging and my skin look pallid and sweaty but it would also help me get my dissertation finished. I got a straight A. However, my grotesque appearance and my manic temperament did not go unnoticed, and one kind-hearted professor voiced his concern. Bluntly, he inquired if I had a drug problem. I remember feeling so annoyed that I burst into a loud, paranoid laughter that made my ribs hurt. I tried to explain my medical condition, but the professor, looking sad, suggested rehab. I scoffed at the notion, explaining that, in truth, drugs rendered me incapable of functioning. Drugs left me on the verge of a panic attack, paranoid and over stimulated. Determined to prove my point, I showed him a scan of my poor thyroid. Finally, he appeared convinced, and he recommended psychoanalysis. He had a friend who could help me.
During my university years, I had taken numerous courses on psychoanalysis and literature and I had written many essays on psychoanalytic readings of Sylvia Plath’s poems and Virginia Woolf’s novels and even Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. I felt flattered. Someone would dissect me! My parents rolled their eyes and laughed at the absurdity of my new endeavor. They said that what I needed was a few days off work and maybe a holiday someplace sunny.
Psychoanalysis was nothing like breaking down a poem, though. In fact, it was like breaking down a person. Dissecting my own psyche was immensely painful and deeply terrifying and I always felt that the analyst was trying to scratch something that shouldn’t be scratched. In my state of semi-sleep, my dreams mirrored this unease, envisioning myself wearing a dog's cone to prevent myself from licking my wounds raw. If I had mustered the courage to persevere, perhaps psychoanalysis would have helped me in the long run. But each visit became a portal to revelations I didn't want to face. My pool of worries expanded tremendously. I found myself worrying about numerous other things I had never worried about. That was not what I needed. Moreover, the financial burden was unbearable. At some point I found myself having to decide between paying the bills of my endocrinologist and paying the bills of the analyst’s sessions. I dropped psychoanalysis altogether and breathed a sigh of relief.
On the peak of my baby blues, a fog had settled on my chest so I decided to consult a psychiatrist. My financial constraints limited my choices, leading me to the only doctor my insurance would cover. As I was leafing through a guns and artillery magazine at the waiting room, failing to take the hint, I managed to get a glimpse of him. He resembled a younger, more Mediterranean version of Anthony Bourdain. I had read Kitchen Confidential a couple of times; I had watched all of his shows. My faith in humanity was foolishly restored for a few minutes. Entering his examination room, my hope crumbled when, to my terror, I realized that all of the walls were adorned with images of Jesus in agony, a stark reminder of my traumatic experiences at the religious school I had attended as a child. I have been an ardent atheist since the age of 9. My parents were never religious. I was never made to attend service. However, this school was across my house which meant that my caffeine-fueled self could easily walk back and forth alone, from a very young age. Also, the fact that it was run by priests and nuns gave my poor parents a false sense of security that I would be well educated, I wouldn’t join a gang and I wouldn’t end up shooting heroin within the school district. Anxiety bubbled inside of me just staring at the pictures and statues of Jesus hanging on the cross, the crown of thorns hurting his beautiful face and the blood leaking all the way to his feet. I realized I had made a terrible mistake and I started fussing around my chair, trying to come up with a good excuse to leave this place. That’s when the Anthony Bourdain lookalike dashed into the room and asked me straight away what was wrong with me. I was at a loss for words. Unable to find the right words, I started crying. Looking completely unsympathetic, the fake-ass Anthony Bourdain asked me if I felt like killing myself. I replied firmly “no, I can’t, I have a baby daughter”. He grinned and preached about suicide being the utmost sin. I thought about Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis and Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf but I couldn’t utter a word. He asked me if I had thought about harming anyone. I shook my head. He gave me a lecture on hysteria. I wondered what Hélène Cixous would say to him had she been in my shoes. More tears started streaming down my face. He gave me a prescription for some uppers and told me to come and see him again in two months’ time. I complained “no uppers please, I am so hyper, I feel like a grind core band or a freight train, I need something to sleep and stay calm”. He looked at me in a spiteful way and hissed “then drink some chamomile tea”. Leaving the psychiatrist's office, I felt even more ashamed and bitterly disappointed than before. The encounter had shattered my faith in the public medical system's ability to help me. The psychiatrist’s sexist and devaluing remarks had diminished me and the therapists’ crappy pieces of advice echoed the inspirational quotes that any teenager could find on Instagram.
In my late teens and twenties I tried all the easy alternatives: herbal remedies; Ayurveda; Bach’s flower essences; homeopathy; acupuncture; yoga; meditation; swimming; hitting the gym for hours; cycling; recreational drugs; pot; alcohol; a combination of two, three or even all the above. I just couldn’t relax, I couldn’t let go.
It’s just that I am terrified all the time. I have turned into a grotesque middle aged version of Piglet from Winnie the Pooh. I have been terrified ever since I remember myself. Fear has been my most loyal friend. My fears have evolved, shifting from one dread to another and altogether constructing my Great Wall of Terror. At first I was terrified of dogs. I was terrified of nuclear assault and the cold war, and then the Gulf war and oil tanks set ablaze. Then I was terrified of allergic reactions, then I was terrified of earthquakes, then I was terrified of disease and death, then I was terrified of terrorism and public places, then I was terrified of being date raped, then I was terrified of police brutality, then I was terrified of dying during childbirth, then I was terrified of SIDS and meningitis. I am currently terrified of all the above mentioned amplified by the thought of something bad happening to my daughter.
Ι am terrified of myself too. How could I have been so immature? Riding on bikes without a helmet! I could have crashed into a tree and died on the spot. Crowd surfing in concerts! I could have been squashed like a spider. Getting intimate with strangers! I could have been raped and murdered. Doing drugs! I could have had a heart attack. Diving off cliffs! Maybe that’s the worst. I could have snapped my spine like Javier Bardem in the Sea Inside. How can I trust that Jasmine will make the right choices when I have been so foolish myself? How can I discourage her from repeating my stupid mistakes but at the same time help her become a strong, independent, fearless Amazon? One of these days my Great Wall of Terror will be visible from space.
In the midst of my contemplation, engulfed by the suffocating state of terror and helplessness, I hear a small, yet familiar voice singing out cheerfully "MAMA, GOOD MORNING!" In that single moment, the shadows dissipate. The voice belongs to my precious daughter who is wide awake and fearless. Her innocent greeting washes over me like a warm embrace, like a glorious ray of sunlight, soothing my anxious soul. Ι turn my beaming face towards her, put on my brightest smile and give her an enormous hug. Life is good after all.
