When I look back to when I was a boy I had no fear. Nothing got in my way and this in later life became an inner strength. That strength is still in there somewhere but it's buried beneath the hundreds of layers of fear that I have spun over these past few years. When I was a boy panic couldn't touch me. Panic is fear of fear and if fear can't touch you then you can't suffer panic.
I wish I was that innocent little boy again or at least have the naive thinking of a child. Then I'd be fine. With age though supposedly comes wisdom. That is debatable. One thing that comes with age for sure though is inquisitveness. You question every thing. You ask why your heart is doing something it doesn't usually do, why you are tired or analyse any other ailment. That's fine, you get over it. But when it doesn't go away or when it keeps recurring you don't. That is what leads to panic attacks. That is the difference between me and the "normal" person- the person without anxiety and panic attacks.
So essentially the difference between the wreck I am now and the strong person I was before is a thinking pattern of fear. I think too much. I ponder constantly and feed the fear. A vicious circle that tires and agitates. Sometimes I think if I bang my head hard enough to forget then I will wake up free of this. If some head doctor put his hand in and stole my memories then with a clean sheet I'd write a different story.
Essentially though it is thinking. I can read how harmless panic attacks are in a relatively calm state and get annoyed at how I let them effect me. I see a woman dying of cancer cycling here, there and everywhere to raise money without complaint. I see old frail people walk miles. I see greatly obese people do the same. People with problems far greater than my own getting through. And in it all I wonder how I can be so weak. It frustrates me. That is until the moment sometime later when I am lying down unable to breathe with my heart bursting through my chest, my throat strangled, my limbs shaking and nothing but darkest despair in my mind. Did I really create this monster and keep feeding it the energy it needs to survive?
Responsibility plays its part. I worked through anxiety before being made redundant because I had no other choice- who would feed my family if I didn't go to work? When I had to look after my girls alone I did it because I had to. When I am so tired during the day that I can't keep my eyes open and can hardly stand for exhaustion I stay awake to watch the baby because I must. Responsibility makes us do things that show we can do them but at the same time isn't really helping our recovery.
I see the innocent child again in photographs. Free of anxiety, free of fear. Also though free of responsibility. Not a care in the world. I've come along way down and taking a wrong turn somewhere. Now I must find the way through this darkness back on to the road I once travelled before as boy to man.
