Silence is golden

After more than a year I'm looking back at my notes, and I realize one thing - I've got so much calmer since I wrote it, so much healthier. Some of the memories are so distant, I have hard time believing it was actually happening to me. Am I cured? No, the panics a still there, they happen, but they are not central part of my day anymore. They became nuisance, unpleasant episodes and immediately forgotten. I remember my therapist told me the attacks will eventually become this, I didn't believe, I was horrified, I thought I'll be able to go back to my old resilient self. Now I've learned that my experience was so drastic, forgetting it is impossible, and just like my tired, twisted years ago ankle hurts when I play soccer, my tired, twisted mind sometimes hurts and I panic.

Since coping with an attack became an non-issue I moved to eliminating first fear. I try to teach myself not to fear what I'm afraid irrationally. When I have especially disturbing fantasy, and I feel I'm going to the place I don't want to go, I taught myself to step back and rationalize the fantasy. I started to understand, that the fantasy, as horrible as it is, can be turned around by simply doubting it. Just like the phobia starts by allowing believing in irrational horrible fantasy, I can grasp the sanity by disbelieving the fantasy. So whenever I have a sane moment, I try to pay attention to it, make it stick in my mind, just like those disturbed moments would be stuck in my head for the rest of the day, when I was on the way to nervous breakdown. Whenever I have moments when reality seems to begin slipping away for no reason (maybe lack of sleep, maybe stress at work, or bad news in a paper), I try as much as I can not to fear that the panic attack (which always comes eventually after those short glimpses of impending doom sensation) will come. I just say to myself - well here it waits for me somewhere around a corner, and it sucks of course, but that's OK, let me see what was I thinking 5 minutes ago. Each time the wheel of emotions makes full circle and it's time to panic it becomes less and less of an event, and as such the fear of the next attack is not as sharp, and the quality of life is improving.

It is still weird, I still fill somewhat strange, and sometimes I wonder if I ever going to feel the way I used to feel, and I'm also not sure at all I can remember what it was like before, and I enjoy my new qualities and wisdom which came from dealing with illness. Have I became autistic in some way? Is it possible at all? Sometimes the world looks and feels like its far away, and I simply watching it like a movie, sometimes it's hard to look in the mirror, but longer I look, and more positive I try to be about what I see there, my mood improves. I'm also surprised how I can have a panic attack in a middle of conversation, and I don't think the person even notices, do I really control situation well? I guess I do, very interesting, I'm controlling myself feeling out of control... It is what it is, and I don't really think it's too important, what's important - is feeling good about myself. It could be just because my life improved for reasons unrelated to the illness, or maybe it's because I learned to utilize myself better, knowing there are limitations?

Andy Warhol went through rough emotional experiences when he was young, and he was neurotic. He wasn't very confident in his looks, but he was confident in his talents. This is one of the pictures of Marilyn Monroe he made after her committing suicide. Was she neurotic too? Most likely, and she definitely was disturbed by some harsh reality she failed to cope with. We would all think, "wow, why did she do it, she had it all". The mere reason probably was she lost confidence and used barbiturates to end it all. I doubt she felt she had it all. Confidence is such finicky thing, one day you feel on top of the world, and the next it all seems to be nothing. It's not our achievements, it's the way we look at those achievements. We need to teach ourselves to love ourselves, to forgive ourselves, to be proud no matter what, and to feel purpose - and if the purpose is to simply walk this earth - so be it. Just like our parents were amused by everything we did as babies, we need to be amused by what we do as adults. Let's be good parents to ourselves. Let's be happy.