Thom and I know this scenario all too well…

When Thom and I lived with Isaac in New Haven I had my first panic attack,
I started to drink everyday as soon as I woke up and eventually I tried
to kill myself - few people know that, well, more now. It’s the most
painful event I’ve ever been through and I still have to manage the
fear everyday.

I’ve been off meds for 5 years now and it’s gotten a little easier, still
can’t handle large crowds, getting startled, or my own feelings of
inadequacy. I bite my nails with a religious fervor and smoke to keep the
stress level down, though I recently quite cigarettes for the same reason!

But the worst things I haven’t given up yet is the blame, I
still beat myself up everyday for what Thom has had to go through and who
this person is that I have become. I’m constantly telling myself “this
isn’t what he signed up for, we’re not even married - he should leave me.”
But Thom reminds me everyday that is it, in fact, the deal. He wanted the
whole ’shebang’ as it were, the hair pulling, paranoid psychotic bitch brandishing
a kitchen knife AND the sweet songbird that happily plays arts and crafts
all day.

I still feel, almost all the time this, physical ache in my chest reminding
me that the person I love most in the world had to experience what I put
him through, had to WATCH ME go through what I went through - that had to
be the hardest part. It keeps stopping me from planning my wedding - I’m
working on it though, it’ll happen someday.

MY POINT? Yes, I have one. Two in fact.

You 2 are a little far away right now, and you and I barely know each other,
but if you ever need anyone to talk to about this junk - someone who’s
fighting the good fight with themselves - Look me up. Our boys seem to seek
out girls like us, Dan’s got one too. I love Dan and Isaac, and so
I love you and Erica too, and if there’s anything I can do from all the way
over here, I’m ecstatic to.

And…
Let it go, don’t hold on to the guilt or the blame - they’re the most damaging
artifacts these attacks leave behind. The sooner the event is over, the sooner
the false negative feelings are over, the sooner life gets back on track.
These attacks are something we’ll have to deal with for a long time, maybe
forever. But if we learn to handle them while they are happening and then
recover from them ASAP then we can get back to life as usual,
perhaps even planning a trip to CT (I always get this hopeful feeling you
guys might be visiting when Thom says “talked to Isaac today…”)

Good Luck, it’s an uphill battle, and we’re fighting for noting more than
level ground.

It wasn’t just that I was angry or resentful that I lost my wife during that time, though I was, and didn’t realize it then. I felt (and sometimes, still feel) horribly guilty about the whole experience. Sometimes I feel like I was the reason you jumped into a marriage when you were still having fun being young, and I know that I was the reason you left San Diego to move to the endless barren soulless landscape that is Los Angeles. That move was great for me career-wise, and it ruined your life. You soldiered on, and you couldn’t keep it up forever.

I know, I’m taking responsibility that isn’t mine. A lot of what went into your panic disorder was already in the works long before you met me, just as my issues had already been pretty well cast in cement by the time you met me. But it still kills me when I think of what you’ve gone through, and think of how I may have contributed to it.

At the same time, it’s not over, and might never be. The thing about psychological/cognitive disorders is that, unlike a disease, they don’t show up as the result of a single cause and they don’t get cured all at once. If you had a panic attack today, it wouldn’t be a “relapse” — it would just be another psychological event in a lifetime of psychological events, some happy, some sad, some intense, and some mild. A relapse implies that you were “cured” and now you’re not “cured” any more. “We thought we got the cancer out, but apparently there were a few cells left behind.”

If only the mind were so simple.

Everything is connected in the psyche. Concepts connect to other concepts in the mind and form webs and networks that stretch across all that we are. In a way, your panic disorder started long before your first panic attack, with the way that your grandfather treated his stepson and your grandmother treated her daughter. And even though you may not have had an attack in a pretty long time, and today you are mostly free of the fear an attack, the effect of that bitter and depressing time in our life still affects us today, and will affect the lessons that our grandchildren learn from their parents and the lives they end up leading. Everything is connected.

In a way, I believe that your anxiety sometimes serves as a very cruel form of mental immune system. When you attempt to put your True Self on hold, She rears up and throws fire and anguish that brings you to your knees. Your True Self is powerful, and rageful when She is scorned. She can and will strike you down with furious vengeance if you attempt to ignore her needs. If you can manage not to be destroyed by Her fire, then she will forge you into a stronger being. I’ve seen this occur in the time that I’ve known you, but it would have been easier, I’m sure, to simply submit and be overtaken by Her power, and lose yourself forever.

Everything is connected. I sought you out, and found myself powerfully drawn to you, because something in me responded to something in you, and vice versa. If I caused your panic disorder, then perhaps it was what had to happen, and perhaps that is how my part in your life had to go. Through all of that time, and all the time since, I’ve known that, no matter how guilty or angry or resentful I may have ever felt, I simply can’t help loving you with all my heart. Leaving you has never been an option that I could seriously consider until and unless every possible alternative had been explored.

Lessons worth learning are often neither easy nor fun. But if you’re brave enough to be honest and face the consequences, then there is wisdom at the end, and sometimes Happiness. The alternative path of blindness and ignorance is simply not acceptable to us, no matter how comfortable it may seem.

I will always be willing to walk that path, as long as you’re by my side.