Emma F.
Photography by Dominick Fini
If you’re reading this, it’s okay if help doesn’t work the first time around.
My panic attacks started at the age of 10. While everyone around me in the fifth grade was worrying about trading Barbies and their future middle school selves, I was stuck in a cycle of panic and fear that never seemed to disappear. I would cry myself to sleep every night, scared of the dark not because I was afraid of monsters, but because I was afraid of death. What happened after death? Where did we go? These thoughts consumed my every breath, thought, and existence.
My first time contemplating my own death was after finding out my grandma had breast cancer. I always knew about death, but having it be a real possibility for the ones I loved really shook me to the core. I never verbalized these fears to my parents because I thought I was selfish. How could I be so self-centered when my grandma was fighting for her life? Eventually, after months of constant crying and every second feeling like the end of the world, my parents sent me to therapy. 4 months later, after not talking about my fear a single time, I was able to suppress my thoughts long enough to get through the days. My family moved to the US, my grandma’s cancer went into remission, and all was in the past (or so I thought.)
Fast forward 8 years later. Quarantine had just started, coronavirus was entering our vocabulary, and everyone’s life was grinding to a halt. For some, that meant more time binge watching Netflix and nature walks, but for me, it meant everything I was running from was about to catch up with me. The panic attacks had returned, and although I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. Every second of every day was spent trying to escape my mind and the looming darkness that followed it everywhere. I wasn’t depressed, I was terrified. As the months crawled by, I began to slowly shut down. I couldn’t go outside because when the sun hit my eyes, I imagined the world exploding and the breath would be knocked out of me, spiraling into fits of crying and panic. I would be on zoom in my living room, see the potted plant that had been there the past 5 years, think of cremation urns, and be so distraught I needed to leave class for the rest of the day.
When I stopped showering because I couldn’t be alone with my own thoughts long enough, my parents suggested I start therapy. At first, I was relieved, thinking it would cure whatever was wrong with me, because I thought it worked last time. However, a month in, therapy became my trigger. I would have panic attacks thinking about the day Wednesday, because Wednesdays were therapy days, and therapy was when I had to talk about the thing that scared me the most. Meditation made me angry, breathing exercises freaked me out, and talking about my problems just made everything so much worse. I started wondering if I was crazy. What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I getting better?
However, one fateful day, my therapist suggested seeing a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist was shocked I had gone so long without trying medication and she put me on SSRI’s right away. Disclaimer: medication is not always the right move for everyone. For some people, therapy works wonders. But in my case, it practically saved my life. You know how when you start thinking about breathing, you can’t breathe normally? It was like my whole life I had been thinking about my breathing, and my brain had finally quieted enough to let me breathe.
3 years later, I realize there is no “cure.” The thing with mental health and anxiety is that it never really goes away. It still looms in the back of my mind, and I sometimes worry about the day where everything crumbles, and I have to start from scratch. My anxiety comes and goes in waves, but it’s no longer a hurricane, and my past makes me stronger day by day. I know what works and doesn’t work for me. I know who to surround myself with to make me feel safe, and I know that if it happens again, it won’t last forever. I recently started running. That helps. Friends help. Family helps. Healing takes time, and it’s okay if help doesn’t work the first time around, just never stop fighting for yourself, because you deserve to live a life that makes it easy to breathe.
Emma F., University of Virginia
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