By Zeinab Fakih
I have no problem talking about my thoughts or opinions. I have zero filter. Just don’t ask me about anything related to emotions. I don’t like sharing feelings or letting on that I’ve been hurt. I can show happiness and sometimes I can get angry (you’d have to really piss me off for that though) but that’s about it. If I ever feel uneasy about anything I can tell myself to get over it and I’m fine. Controlling my emotions is a skill I have and use a lot. So, you can imagine the surprise when one day I couldn’t and I had my first ever panic attack.
Ask someone what their biggest fear is and they may tell you heights, or spiders, or sharks. My biggest fear is feeling out of control. When I don’t have any control over something I get stressed out and don’t know how to handle myself and that is exactly what I felt one day in my senior year.
I was in my Writer’s Craft class. I absolutely loved this class. It was so much fun getting to create stories, write poems and speeches, and watch a very lively rap done by one of my classmates… our songwriting unit was definitely something.
Anyways, we were covering speeches and public speaking at this point and we basically had to present a speech we wrote. I love presenting my work; it’s so much fun for me. This class was right after lunch and I felt weird all through lunch and still in class but I didn’t think much of it. Someone was presenting their speech and I really wanted to go next but I started feeling a sense of dread. I couldn’t breathe and my hands started shaking. I tried just sitting on my hands to get them to stop and kept telling myself to calm down and push away the panic. I’m good at controlling my emotions and, for some reason, I wasn’t able to control this emotion. I waited for my friend to finish presenting before I went up to my teacher to ask to leave. His presentation was probably only a minute long but it felt like forever. As soon as he finished I walked up to my teacher and calmly said, “I think I’m about to have a panic attack, can I leave?”.
He looked at me, shocked and worried, and said, “of course go”.
I walked out of that classroom and dropped to the ground. I was shaking, I couldn’t breath, my fingers were tightly curled in and I couldn’t move them. Suddenly everything was so loud.
One of my friends came out after me and thank God she did. My breath was so shaky and she just kept repeating, “it’s okay. You’re fine. It’s going to be okay.” And I couldn’t even look at her. I was fixated on this spot on the wall and the only thing I was thinking about was why she was being so loud and why I was feeling this way. I didn’t have anything to be anxious about. My grades were great, I didn’t have any tests coming up, I was ready and excited for my presentation — there was nothing to be panicked about. So why was I feeling like this? I kept telling her that my fingers were stuck and that I couldn’t move. I was so freaked out by the fact that I couldn’t unbend my fingers.
After a while I was able to slowly catch my breath and I asked if she could take me to the washroom. I tried getting up myself but my knees still buckled so this poor girl who is smaller than me had to hold me up and walked me down the hall so I could go wash up. We got to the washroom and I was absolutely exhausted. I sat down on the floor as she handed me tissues. I finally got up and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were red and puffy and my face was flushed and tear streaked. That was probably the weirdest thing for her. I never cry and if I do the people around me are in a state of shock and don’t move.
I had lost control… I hated it.
She walked me back to my locker and I got my sweater and a juice before we walked back into class. Everything happened so fast. I thought we had only been out about 20 minutes — maybe less — but when we got back all my friends were asking me what happened because we had been out for a little more than 30 minutes.
I did not want to talk about it. I hate talking about anything in regards to my feelings or emotions or anything related to it and here I was, in class with my hood on trying my best to cover my face. I was so happy my teacher steered everyone’s attention away and didn’t ask me to present. We need more teachers like that.
And now here I am talking about it. Or writing about it, I should say.
Honestly, it was so unreal. It was strange. I felt so drained afterwards and everyone just kept asking me what was wrong and was I okay but I didn’t know what was wrong and I definitely was not okay but I didn’t know how to voice that. I still don’t know how to voice my feelings. I hate talking about why I’m not okay or even say that I’m not okay in the first place. I suck at communicating my feelings.
The thing that really pissed me off, though, was that this was totally preventable. Turns out my blood sugar was so low that day that it caused symptoms of anxiety…like a panic attack. So, I changed my diet and I honestly feel so much better but there’s always that nagging feeling that one day I’m going to snap again and find myself frozen on the ground. And there’s not much I can do about that. I think that’s what sucks the most.