As I was walking back to my dorm with a friend on Thursday, she mentioned that sewer grates freaked her out. I had the same fear as a child, and then came the overflow of childhood phobias I had seemingly repressed all these years later.
All throughout elementary school and into middle school, I feared everything. I was afraid to walk on sewer grates because I thought a screw would come loose and send me crashing down into a large, dark abyss. I was afraid to drive under bridges in my hometown because I thought the train’s weight on the bridge would send it toppling down onto my family’s car. I would have panic attacks the morning of every field trip because I was afraid something bad would happen to me or someone in my family while I was away from them. Every time I had a band or choral performance, I would become so nervous; there were times I made myself physically ill from it.
I remember talking to my parents in my senior year of high school about a very specific occurrence. I was one of five children in my grade chosen to perform in a choral festival an hour away from our hometown. The morning of the festival, I was extremely nervous. So nervous, in fact, that I vomited. And when I vomit, I have full-blown panic attacks. I was sobbing, shaking, gasping for air, cold beads of sweat covering my entire body.
I tried to get my parents to let me stay home, but they made me go. Not only did I have terrible performance anxiety, I had even worse separation anxiety. So I sobbed the entire car ride to my school and the entire hour-long bus ride to the school where the festival was held.
Once I was there, I was okay for a while. Then we started singing in smaller groups, and my anxiety got the worst of me. I felt as though I was going to faint, so I sat down. The guest conductor yelled at me, which didn’t help my anxiety. Once everyone sat down, I remember leaning over to my friend Angie, who was right beside me, and telling her, “Move.” Before she could even ask why, I was vomiting. Again. And I kept vomiting all the way from the stage, through the auditorium, up until the kind teacher walking with me lead us to the nurse’s office.
When I brought this up to my parents all these years later, they admitted that was the moment they realized something was truly wrong with how I handled my emotions. They admitted they should have taken me to therapy or gotten me some other form of help.
Even though they said that, I knew that wasn’t a real option for us. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. That same year I fell off of my scooter and skid across the gravel, leaving both kneecaps without any sight of skin on them. We didn’t have the money to pay for hospital bills and stitches; we slapped two industrial-sized Band Aids on my knees for months. I knew we wouldn’t have been able to afford therapy.
Although I know I should have gotten professional help as a child, I still somehow managed to find my own—healthy—way of coping with my anxiety. I think the younger me would be proud of how far she’s come.