I had
my first panic attack at thirteen.
Granted,
I had no idea that’s what it was called. The un-tamable anxiety that coursed
through my body would creep and ebb like tides, unsure of what I was feeling I’d
fluctuate between trying to nap it away or pace the large carpeted home my
family just moved into.
I
believe it was then when I became truly aware of how trapped we were as
children; bound to the decisions the adults in our life made regardless of the
ways in which it affected us. As the second of five children I was able to
exist in a clouded delusion of youth – up until a certain point. My older
sister began to experience panic attacks at the age of eight, so I suppose the
luxury of my birth order revoked my ability to be fully present to our circumstances
until I turned thirteen.
**
Contextually,
our family had just moved into a home within the Mormon district of Mesa,
Arizona, and it was to be a much darker presence in our lives than even the
mauve/charcoal brick and darkly shuttered windows outside entailed.
It was
within the first day we discovered the bark scorpions. Turns out, only our
cul-de-sac of the neighborhood sat atop their nest. We would find them
scuttling about the house; on the walls, the ceilings, our bedrooms. The first
time I was stung I was sleeping in my bed when one lashed out at the back of my
knee as it wandered beneath my comforter. The second time was during a foolish
attempt to fling a large scorpion off my younger brother’s sandal, when it
lashed out and stung the ring finger on my right hand. Try to imagine the pain
of a couple angry hornets accompanied by the sensation of said-limb being
slammed in a heavy steel door. By themselves the scorpions would be enough to send
anyone reeling into a constant state of fear. One decided to ninja my dad in
the face when he slept, you never knew when you’d encounter a crunchy tan alien
and be sent into a desperate fight or flight response.
On the
third day, a matriarch of a local Mormon family came by with an upside-down
pineapple cake (seriously, who eats those?) She hadn’t been inside more than
five minutes before bursting with curiosity;
“So, did they tell you about the
house…?”
Two
weeks before my parents had signed the rental agreement for the house in Mesa,
the Arizona State Legislature passed a bill allowing property owners the right
to withhold information from tenants if they chose not to disclose specific information
about their real estate.
The previous
tenant had been a solitary man in his thirties who occupied the house for eight
or so years. Eventually he had been convicted of being a sexual predator and
possessing child pornography, and after a brief stint in jail (fuck you,
Arizona,) he returned home and took a gun to his head. Due to nerves or shitty
aim his death wasn’t instant, and he dragged himself from the kitchen to the
laundry room to bleed out. He was found months later by an ex-girlfriend, whom
the neighbors had contacted due to his absence – and an unbelievable smell emitting
from the house. That definitely explained the residual odor that no amount of
air freshener ever covered, and the tiny splatters on the sections of wallpaper
the owners didn’t replace.
Thus
began the hatching of panic attacks and depression. They pecked their way
through my youthful haze of ignorance and a heavy fear settled in. If I had to
pinpoint what exactly set me off, I would say it was the feeling of being
trapped. In this particular incident the rental agreement did trap us there. With a racing heart beat and quivering limbs I
constantly felt as though I was on the verge of an incomprehensible break down
or sob fest. I didn’t want to live
there, why couldn’t we leave? We had already moved three times in three years,
away from the only friend I had made in Ahwatukee (Phoenix has mini cities) and
further from our maternal grandparents who lived in Arcadia. We were the only
non-Latter Day Saint family in our part of town, in the only non-adobe-stucco style
home, which happened to be haunted by semi-poisonous arachnids and the aroma of
a dead pedophile.
My
mother perceived the panic attacks, shakes, and gasping for air as pre-teen
dramatics, therefore I was left to my own devices to find reprieve. My siblings
and I would often walk to the gravel-covered playground of a nearby school we
didn’t attend or walk to a convenience store across the road to escape the
tension and auditory violence of my parents constantly arguing. At thirteen and
fourteen my sister and I had christened the constant sense of anger, fear, and
conflict between our parents “the family situation”. A term that would reappear
in conversation even up until this past year before my mother’s passing. When I
was stuck at home I would wait for my turn on the ancient Dell computer that
sat on the unfurnished parlor floor carpet, connected to a screechy dial-up
modem. I would waste away hours reading anime fanfiction or chatting on AIM to
my new schoolmates from Fountain Hills. If possible, I tried to spend the night
with a friend out there as often as I could – the panic attacks were worse at
home.
**
I
started seeing a therapist for the first time in my third year living in NYC.
It’s funny how unemployment finally allows you access to health insurance,
where as being a low-income earner does not. I spent six months with my
therapist unpacking my family history, how little faith I had in myself to
function in this world outside of my youth in the Unification Church, and
mostly how desolate the future looked to me. It was after a two-week drinking
binge where my therapist put her foot down and finally suggested medication.
It
worked for a while. It felt like a trapeze net that held me above an oubliette,
it gave me a higher starting point in which to claw back out of the pit all the
while seeing how much further down I could be. I spent about two years on
Citalopram (Celexa,) and as my summer apprenticeship in Santa Fe working for the
Opera came to a close, I began to feel the depression and anxiety suffocate me
like a fish gasping on a dock. My coworker would often let herself into my
apartment at the opera-owned complex, and find me lying motionless and staring on
the carpet of the living room or my bedroom.
From my
understanding, the Unification Church doesn’t hold much bearing on mental
health issues and services people may require. Much like my mother’s Bell’s Palsy
that resulted from untreated Lyme’s Disease, medical issues like depression,
chemical imbalances, bipolar disorder, were often pinpointed as being “attacked”
by spirit world. Some impure thought, action, or lifestyle choice of yours
opened up your subconscious up to evil spirits who were now controlling you.
There were times when I would phone my mother and confess I was too depressed
to get out of bed, how everything felt meaningless and that I wished that there
was a way to make the pain go away. My mother would quietly listen and then
respond explaining my sadness was a result of the way I chose to live my life.
If I had chosen the ‘true’ path, stayed within the church, believed in God, and
had gotten blessed (“married” in church-lingo,) that none of this would be
affecting me.
In
church run summer camp events, religious workshops, or on trips to Reverend Moon’s
Cheongpyeong retreat center in Korea, Unification Church members would sit in rows and physically beat
on each other with fists to release the evil spirits out of each other’s
bodies.
My
mother never truly admitted to her own depression, or that mental illness also
ran rampant through both sides of my family. She even spotted signs of a chemical
imbalance in one of my brothers, who showed signs of severe depression as young
as three years old, but never acted to have a medical professional look into why
a diaper-clad toddler would lay about the floor, motionless and sad. It wasn’t
until we were older when we began to look back at my mother’s behavior and see
beyond her veneer of cheery optimism; that she too felt unequivocally helpless
and depressed.
When I
returned to New York from New Mexico I moved to Queens, where Medicaid limited me
to lower-economic level health clinics servicing downtrodden outpatients of the
outer-boroughs. Without much attention or interest, a psychiatrist with a ‘Monkees’-esque
toupee scribbled out a prescription for Zoloft. I was bounced to another
Spanish-speaking family clinic in Rego Park where the new psychiatrist wasted
no time putting me on Effexor.

If I
had to circle back and say what I think the root cause is, I’d still go with
the feeling of being trapped. I often feel trapped as an introvert, stumbling in
my social interactions and chalking up the constant sense of loneliness to
being ‘too different’, only now on the other side of the line outside of the Unification
Church.
I
question my ability as a person to develop the tools to be a successful person.
I’m approaching thirty and I find myself unemployed – again. Without a savings
account – again. In credit card debt- again. No amount of self-help books,
positive thinking women’s online business courses, or pep talks from friends
ever boost me above the waters murky surface. Attempts to crank the wheel of my
thought processes towards optimism often cracks a demented smile on my face -
nothing feels more insincere than telling myself things will pick up. It’s not
that I think I’m a pessimist, but ‘realist’ feels more applicable. I can march
up and down the hallway of my apartment repeating mantras; “It’s MY time, I’m ready for the NEXT STEP!”
…But
the reality often ends up being that I’ve spent another day at home applying to
food service or menial-labor desk jobs, because gigs offered to me in my
industry all seem to be labeled ‘unpaid’. I can’t tell my roommates how much of
a failure I feel like since I had to put rent on a credit card again, and that
no new prospects have cropped up. I don’t particularly want to end up broke and
unemployable the way my parents have, but I’m not sure how else to qualify it
when I’m digging through our apartments communal fridge and discover I’m the
only one without food – again. You know what the best medication would be? A
good job with a steady wage and a sense of purpose (like that time I was building
wigs for cancer patients.)
For both
economical and personal reasons I’ve chosen to ween myself off of Effexor –
slowly. The mental and physical effects of the withdrawal are still there, resulting
in an involuntary twitch of my arm or an entire day spent sleeping to ward off
sadness. Jiji, my kitten helps; a purring tuft of black fur nestled against my
stomach in the morning temporarily chases the demons away, and I think she’s a
major reason I was able to carry after my mom passed away.
Ultimately,
the tiny white beads inside the orange Effexor capsules weigh out to be a lot
more than milligrams or a piece of mind. For me it’s accepting that
biologically/circumstantially depression and anxiety are very real, they’re not
God’s way of telling me he’s displeased and letting Satan punish me for choosing
the life of an atheist. But like most of my life’s journey, I will have to
develop the muscles to survive on my own and I hope I will become strong enough
to stand without the pills. Even on my darkest days.
So very sorry for what you have had to go through. I joined the church in 1972, was in the MSG wedding and left in 1990 with my wiife and our two children, my son 30 and my daughter 27.
ReplyDeleteI might suggest a couple of things which could help with detoxing from the meds. One is high levels of Vitamin C and I would suggest the Sodium Ascorbate powder form rather than Ascorbic Acid. I have read research where people were taken off heroin without withdrawal by IVing 40 to 50 grams of Sodium Ascorbate. Dr Robert Klenner rather pioneered IV use of vitamin C, healing people of Polio in days and bringing people out of viral pneumonia in a coma in days as well. Google Dr Robert Klenner and his Vitamin C protocol. Another thing which might well be beneficial is Earthing or Grounding which can be as simple as sitting with your bare feet in contact with the damp soil of your garden. Connecting a wire from the ground lug of an electrical socket and laying the bare wire against your skin will serve the same purpose. Personally I do use the silver thread containing half sheets which can be purchased but slept for a couple of years with just a bare wire across the sheet of my bed. Lots of information freely accessible at this site including a free audio book. earthing.com
My own exit from the church has brought me to an understanding aligned with the early Quakers and has given me much comfort.