A few days ago I had a panic attack which involved me saying ridiculous, incoherent things and after a 17-minute phone call (I had to look it up; it felt more like 30 seconds) Rudy had me all like “What just happened?”

In a good way.

Last I left off I thought he was mad at me. (If you don’t remember that story you can find it here.)

I was already in a state and entered panic mode shortly thereafter. There were some missing puzzle pieces for Rudy, as I had been wondering when I should discuss them or if they needed to be mentioned at all.

What he managed to do for me in light of that missing information is nothing short of a miracle in my book.

Here’s what I told him helped me after doing my standard panic attack postmortem:

1. You stayed calm when I called, even though I was a panicky mess.

2. You told me you weren’t Dan and repeated that you weren’t mad at me, bringing me back to the present

3. You didn’t go out for a smoke, metaphorically.

By the end of the call he was laughing a little bit. I don’t remember why. At the time I remember feeling like it wasn’t good, but his laughter is my favorite sound in the world anyway. I just shut up and my mind just shut off. With nothing for my panic to feed on, the episode abruptly stopped.

I still had to deal with the aftermath, but the point is the aftermath started right away.

I’m days past the event and still can’t stop thinking how monumental it was for me.

What if everyone (and by everyone I mean Dan) treated me compassionately? What if everyone had this power over my panic attacks? What if I had this power?

I think I could be a better person with that kind of support, and I want to be better more than I want Oreos.

When I told Mom that Rudy was mad at me, her advice was, “Emily, don’t you dare take care of somebody else before you.”

“I won’t. I promise,” I told her.

Who knew that promise would be so easy to keep?

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The last few days have been epically bad. First I went on nortriptyline, then I got notice my divorce forms had mistakes, then I went off nortriptyline, then Rudy got mad at me, then I had a neverending panic attack, and then I got brain zaps. And I still can’t feel my hands.

To deal with panic attacks, my primary put me on nortriptyline in addition to the Lexapro. Mom is pretty sure I had a seizure on the nortriptyline, which I’ve taken before. I didn’t anticipate a problem except for being groggy.

It was a problem though—I couldn’t remember how I got into a wheelchair—and I feel like I have regressed, not improved. Logical Me knows that’s not how any of this works and recovery is not a straight line but Reactive Me is worried that this is permanent. That I will never get better.

In the middle of all of that, I got a notice from the divorce people that stuff was wrong with my paperwork, and in trying to fix it I kept creating more problems. So I’m in limbo until I hear back. The last I heard was something like “will mail these to you if all looks good.” That if is doing some seriously heavy lifting.

After 2 weeks of giving nortriptyline a shot, it was clear it wasn’t working so I went off of it. And like going off of all antidepressants it wasn’t a lot of fun. My blood pressure bottomed out to the point I was fainting just trying to sit up. Of course no one believed I was that sensitive to that little dosage, so I had to overexplain myself and not say “fuck you” to everybody who was worried. The restraint nobody knows I’m spending energy on y’all.

Then the other night Rudy got mad at me. He said “f [my] attention” which he explained away, but it’s just not sitting right with me. I have a standing agreement with myself not to make any regretful life decisions on weed or suffering withdrawal from antidepressants, so I’m biting my tongue.

But it feels razor sharp in my mouth right now. If there’s one thing I can still cling to, it’s my impulse control. I think that comes free with every anxiety disorder. That whole fawning to save my life thing.

Speaking of anxiety, all of this chaos has given me one rolling panic attack. As soon as one clears, it feels like another is on its way. It’s disheartening because I was actually doing quite well…

I’m sorry, I must interrupt. My blood pressure is still really low, but I pooped! This calls for a celebration! Please happy dance in place.

The Brain Zaps were intense and numerous yesterday. They have been weaker and fewer so far this morning. I’d like for them to have not happened, but it’s not for nothin’ I’ve been called hypersensitive to drugs.

And last but not least, my hands. I can’t feel a damn thing with them right now. So it’s super hard to use my phone and eat. Trying not to get trapped by anxious and depressed thoughts with all of this going on?

Eat a bowl, haters.

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I’d like to say it was easy, but it wasn’t. Not because I was unsure it was the right thing to do—it absolutely was—but because after nearly 17 years, the pain had fused to me.

Like a wetsuit of lead, there were places I had to use a scalpel to surgically remove the hurt from me. And it wasn’t always clear what was hurt and what was me. After so much time, the pain felt like it was part of me. Like I was cutting away part of myself. Sometimes the unfamiliar can feel scary, even if it will most certainly be better.

When it was done and he’d started his long drive back to Nevada, I tried to think of the horrible things he said and did that pissed me off to give myself some energy. But I was too tired for any of that. I just let the gloom settle over me and leaned into it.

For so many reasons this divorce was not like the last one. But today I forgive him and I forgive myself and I’m moving on. I don’t feel animosity. I don’t want to feel burdened anymore. I’m simply getting up from the table.

Rudy once asked me if I ever spoke to Amanda Crowell Itliong before she passed. I hadn’t, so I looked her up and read an article where she was quoted as having said something like, divorce happens to people with cancer too. Sometimes people aren’t emotionally equipped to handle it all. That jumped out at me. I felt that was the case with Dan, and probably me too, if I’m brutally honest with myself about it.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I think it will be brighter now. I have been so anxious and so depressed for too long. I’m grateful to make it out in time.

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Based on a true story.

My Grandma Hattie died on Christmas Eve in 2006, and her absence from the world knocked the wind out of me like I’d been socked in the gut with a duffle bag full of bricks.

Technically, she was my step-grandmother, but I’d loved her fiercely since I was a little kid, when she married my widower grandpa. We lived far away from my grandparents, so visiting her was how we spent lots of family vacations.

On the first day of school my fourth-grade year when we were asked to report on our summer vacations, I was telling my classmates about Gramma. How she made spaghetti for dinner. How she bought pull-apart cinnamon bread from a corner grocer so close to her house you could walk to it, how she baked the best zucchini bread in the world, and how she had rhubarb growing right in her back yard. I went on about how she taught me to do Cryptoquip puzzles in the daily newspaper, then shared how she let me put pink plastic rollers in her silvery hair while we watched a Cubs game on TV one night.

Most of my contemporaries were telling the class about their trips to Disney World. I always felt sorry for them.

Anyway, the Christmas she died, I was between the fall and spring semester of my junior year at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. My only obligation until after the new year was to my two very part-time jobs—office manager at a psychiatrist’s clinic on Fridays, and editorial assistant at The Saturday Evening Post on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I arranged my work schedule around the two-day trip to Freeport, Illinois to attend her funeral and be with my family, but I didn’t tell anyone at either job why I altered my schedule. I’d been feeling more reclusive, wanting to keep everything about my private live private.

“You don’t have to go with me for the funeral,” I told Rodney while filling a small carry on with clothes, a hair dryer, travel size toiletries, and a make up bag. “You barely knew her, and besides you shouldn’t ask your boss for more time off right now. We still have at least three sessions with Pastor Tim next month.” It was all true, but there was another reason I didn’t want Rodney to go with me on the road trip: I didn’t want him to go with me anywhere.

One of the many, many downsides to evaluating every word that slithered past my lying husband’s forked tongue was that judgment became a compulsion for me. Witnessing how often he lied, and how often he did it in my presence, somehow resulted in my developing anthropophobic tendencies. Rodney lied to my boss and coworkers at the Christmas party. He lied to new friends I’d made at church. He lied to my best friend Liz when she came over to study. And whether he was telling his brother-in-law about the time he had to return the Fossil watch he hadn’t actually purchased or he was telling the girl behind the deli counter how much he enjoyed a movie he had never seen, my reaction was always visceral. My eyes darted shiftily to see who else knew I was abetting a dude who told bald-faced lies for absolutely no reason.

I hated being party to the deception and resented him for making me a fool. Because I was the one with the conscience, I was the one who bore the shame of his lies. Shame was a daily mantle I wore, whether I was around when he told a lie or not. I was always wondering what shit he was making up when I wasn’t there, what story I was going to have to pretend I already knew about.

To this day, I still feel a little guilty that I never called him out while he was lying to someone. Still, I am pretty sure that I was Rodney’s tell. When people saw my cheeks flush and my gaze drop to my shoes—which was pretty much any time his mouth was moving—they had to know. Had to. “People aren’t stupid,” I told him once hoping fear of judgment would get him to lie less, seeing how his image meant more to him than anything else in the world. “They all know you’re full of shit. They’re just too nice to call you a phony.” Unfortunately, that strategy had zero effect. Nothing I ever said, not even the harshest truth, could pierce the veil of lies he told to himself about himself.

“I’ll be damned if he’s going to lie to my family at Gramma’s funeral,” I muttered to no one, zipping my suitcase.

It turned out driving north on the interstate with nothing to see but prairie grass, wind turbines, and sky for miles and miles gave me time to lean into my grief and forget I married a sociopath. I reminisced about Gramma. About how I used to tease her saying, “You’ve got the brownest eyes, you must be an Ackerman!” She once told me she hated people saying that to her growing up, so naturally I never let it go. I thought about how I used to trace the veins on the backs of her softly aged hands. I thought about how scared she must have been to get lost in her own hometown driving home from the bank one day. It turned out she’d had a brain tumor—a coincidental plight I wouldn’t learn I shared with her for another decade.

By the time Gramma’s funeral was over and I was back on the road to Indianapolis, I was out of tears. The funeral home turned out to be a great safe space for weeping over everything, not just death. When I’d finished crying for Gramma, I cried about all things Rodney, and finally I cried from sheer exhaustion. I was tired of working two jobs, going to school full-time, doing all the cleaning and cooking, all the emotional labor, and then trying to salvage a marriage with a man I couldn’t stand. I was beginning to understand that the hate and resentment I harbored for Rodney was disabling me.

But diligent to a fault, I decided I to check in with him. I called Rodney from an I-39 gas station about a quarter mile from Bloomington-Normal to let him know how much longer I would be. He didn’t pick up, so I left him a voice mail. “I’ll probably be home about…seven o’clock?” I said, pausing briefly to calculate how many hours I still had on the road plus account for the time difference. “Let’s just get dinner at Qdoba tonight. I’m not going to feel like cooking. See you in a bit.” I grabbed a caffeinated beverage and a bag of pretzels from the convenience store before getting back on the road. I wasn’t hungry, still full up on grief and all, but I snacked out of habit to keep me alert.

Rolling into the driveway about three hours later, I pushed the button on the garage door opener. Rodney’s truck wasn’t inside. No big deal, but I was starving and unwilling to sit even another minute behind the wheel. I was also too drained to endure having pizza delivered to the condo no delivery driver on earth could find. Maybe Rodney was at the library or something and could stop at the Qdoba near campus on his way home. I texted him.

“Just got home. So hungry. Where are you?”

He texted back, “Be there in 20.”

I noticed the time stamp on my text was just a little after 6 p.m., much earlier than I thought I’d be home. I wrinkled my forehead trying to check my math. How did I get home so early? I chalked it up to bad math. I was an English major after all.

Rodney’s truck eventually rumbled into the driveway. I was loitering in the yard with Taubensee. He’d already done his business and was rooting around the lawn, sticking his nose down the chipmunks’ tunnel and sniffing tree trunks for pee-mail from the neighbor’s dog. Rodney slammed his truck door, and Taub and I both turned to look.

“What are you doing here?” he snarled, loud enough for anyone on the block to hear.

“Fuck you, I live here,” I snapped. I was never in a mood for Rodney’s bullshit, but I was seriously not in the mood just then. I didn’t care who heard us fighting.

“You’re an hour early,” he said.

Before I had a chance to say, “So?” something dawned on me. He thought I’d intentionally arrived home an hour earlier than I’d told him I would. It was a nefarious plot. Entrapment.
He slung his messenger bag over his shoulder in a huff and said, “You have to learn to trust me, you know.”

“Actually, I don’t,” I said, walking over to examine an envelope that had fallen out of his bag. “I don’t have to trust you any more than you have to tell the truth.” He hadn’t realized he’d dropped anything. “So where were you?” I held the envelope inches from his face. It was addressed simply to “Rodney” in a feminine, flowing script and there was a smiley face drawn inside the “O”. He reached for it, but I drew it back quickly and removed the card inside. It was from Lucy. I looked again at his unzipped bag and noticed a red and green box poking out of the center pocket. “You exchanged Christmas gifts with her while I was at my grandmother’s funeral?” I might have cried if I was hydrated enough to produce tears. “You’re shameless.”

“It was better than having to spend Christmas Day with you.” I was surprised he didn’t stick his tongue out at me after he said it. He landed jabs like a playground bully. No, worse than a playground bully.

Taub pulled me as a squirrel crossed at the end of the drive, but I maintained my ground. “You are the world’s most inept cheater. I mean, you wear indiscretion like a clown wears shoes. You can’t even bother to zip your bag to secure the evidence?”

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In Nystagmus Land that’s quite a feat actually, and I’m proud of it. Plus I sat up the whole time, which was an extra bonus for my circulatory system.

I ate lunch without choking. When I enter panic mode it’s really hard to swallow sometimes, so an uneventful meal is something to cheer about. The last thing I need is a phobia about eating.

In general I’m steadier on my feet and less likely to tip over. That’s reassuring. These constant changes in my physical abilities are one of the things that makes me so sure this is panic. (It helps that when I had scans done for brain stuff, they turned up nada.)

Still no cathartic cry, but I’m ready for it when it happens. To be honest I’m
exhausted always being on the brink. Just wish it would happen already.

Last night was particularly hard on my mom. Things were rough, and she is a sympathetic crier. That’s how I know I should have been crying. I had my relaxation playlist on and “You Can Do This Hard Thing” by Carrie Newcomer played. I think it was the first time she’d heard it. It kind of hits hard for both of us.

It’s warm enough here but very gray and cloudy, which has my spirits down a little more than usual. Going to rest and meditate now and see if that helps.

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There are things I need to do. Mobile deposit a check and do taxes. I just don’t want to do them.

Oh, and it doesn’t look like virtual therapy is going to be covered by my insurance. I think I’m going to go back to virtual EMDR and weed for anxiety.

This is mean spiraling in anger.

I can do EMDR whenever it’s convenient and I can do it more than once a week. And it helped me a little when I tried it before. I just couldn’t afford to stick with it, but this time Mom wants to help. I plan to use the Unwinding Anxiety app too. Wish me luck!

I’m still getting routine updates from Dan and trying not to let them bother me, but it’s hard when you want someone to choke on a bowl. I still have bruises from the last nosedive I took when he was here. And I’m still mad that he wouldn’t respect my boundaries for even 24 hours.

Valentine’s Day was nice. I got chocolate covered strawberries from Rudy, and I sent him a card but I don’t think it arrived on time. Now can we fire Louis DeJoy?

I still struggle with feeling adequate and even just my feeling like myself, but I think I’m making progress. A good cry might be around the corner.

That’s the thing about anxiety; everything feels life threatening. Even being sad. It’s kind of fucked up. And by ‘”kind of” I mean it most assuredly is.

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Mostly I just want to be held. So naturally the person I want to do that is in another state.

I’ve endured some pretty shitty things on my way to this place. (So has Rudy, but this ain’t called Emily’s Blog for nothing.)

There was some drama a couple of nights ago that ended up with me falling, my head bleeding because it hit the toilet, and my mom calling 911. I’m fine, but shaken. I always fall in the bathroom because that’s where I was traumatized the most. I can feel the panic attack set in the instant I put my foot on the cold tile.

I’m mad that I pay Dan’s nsurance premiums, which easily and conveniently pay for his therapy while I struggle to find someone who takes my insurance. It feels so unfair. Sometimes I can accept that, and sometimes I can’t.

It’s like I was telling Mom on the bathroom floor the other night, everything I do is a fight and I’m so tired I can’t even cry right.

Meanwhile I’m getting texts from him that he’s two weeks smoke-free, and feeling sorry for myself because he wasn’t willing to quit to lessen my financial burden. I’m happy for him, but sorry for myself.

I get worried that I’m the problem, and spiral. This is hard.

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Like the cancer, the generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) isn’t something I asked for. Though someone is always eager to assume we psychos bring this on ourselves. That’s total bullshit. Nobody chooses this crap.

I’m sure some part of my lingering anxiety has to do with Dan coming back next month to get his things and whether or not he will make my life difficult again when he does that.

It’s not that I care, it’s that he is a trigger now—in the truest sense of its therapeutic meaning. Thoughts of him coming back give me all the physical symptoms of anxiety and a looming panic attack. That familiar tension in my neck and shoulders that leads to paralysis on my right side and numbness in my hands and feet.

It’s not something I want, but it is something I need to deal with in order to function as a whole person.

In my experience pain isn’t weakness leaving the body, relaxation is. So I deep breathe and remind myself that I can do this hard thing. Besides, it’s a couple of weeks off and not worth worrying about right now.

Tuesday was a good day and productive day, but it’s night time as I write this, and I am starting to overthink because my brain is going on autopilot. I’m tired.

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