Panic Survivor Members Blog

I've been feeling pretty bad lately, much worse than I did in months but not on a constant basis - it's more like feeling very bad for two days in a row and then having sort of a more decent day, but even when anxiety is at its worst, I am somehow badly trying not to give it too much credit. Sometimes I even manage to make great fun of it, and when mama2three and Honeyface help me with that, we do have such a hard time to stop LAUGHING :) Thank you both so much, you are two dear, wonderful and special friends!

We had such a great time talking on Sunday night (for me it was night) that I absolutely refused to anticipate my yet another dentist's appointment, even though I haven't gone out for days apart from spending some short time in the evening in front of my building to feed the dogs. When I went to bed, I did give in to some anticipation, but the chat we had was much more dominant in my head and I fell asleep very fast. Next thing I know was opening my eyes, and watching the clock stating clearly 11.30 a.m. Ok, 11.30 a.m. I turn around in my bed for while, 2-3 minutes pass.. and then I go - JESUS ELEVEN THIRTYYYYYY..don't get me wrong, I didn't freak out because it was late, I usually sleep even longer as I go to bed very late, but because I had my dentist appointment at 1.30 p.m. - that means that I had only 2 hours or less for benzo to start working and with my metabolism, that is not enough.. so like a good drug addict I jumped to get the benzo very quickly and knocked over at least ten things from my table :) Going to the dentist and what’s more with a taxi means I have to triple my usual morning dose, so I did it and tried to relax a bit more, but I didn't have much success with that. Soon I had to get up, had my usual 4-5 diarrhea visits to the bathroom to cleanse my stomach and every muscle in my body was refusing to get me out of the house, the benzo obviously didn't have enough time to kick in. But I dragged myself out and while in the car (I hate been driven in this state) I had all sorts of weird thoughts, what I am doing here, let me out of here, how can I escape, when will I be home.. so I had to be a bit rude with myself and told myself – you’ll be home tomorrow honey, you have to sleep at the dentist's.. ahh the dentist, right, I forgot I was going there with all these “I am going to die” issues.. now I even have to sit in that chair.. OK..I got there with my mom and I was like ready to enter the coma as benzo started to kick in, but I also felt anxiety at the same time.. Yes I thought again that I will be in the evening news with a headline - NUTCASE IN A DENTIST'S OFFICE, but that obviously didn't happen and nobody noticed anything, I even had a very nice chat with the man. After that something has gotten into me and I dragged my mom to a store and even tried on some sweaters!!! I was a little insecure on my feet, and pretty much deralized while I talked to the woman selling there - like is she here, and am I here… and is this real?? but that's not something new, I live with this feeling every single day.. so I bought two sweaters and some towels and something for my mom and harmed a little bit my credit card, but who cares. :)  Anyhow it was the last day of its validity, it expired on  11/09 and now I have to go very far from home to take the new one, how am I going to do that I can't imagine, but I'll have to, otherwise I can kiss goodbye all my agoraphobic online shopping.

 We got into a taxi again and went to more stores, for some dog food this time and I even walked a solid mile to reach the house. While walking I didn't feel really all right as obviously I wasn't walking in the true sense of that word these last days at all, but I walked. Halfway home we met our next door neighbor who goes - hey come here, listen to this.. he had a new waking alarm on his cell phone that goes - wake up.. wake up you lazy bastard.. WAKE UP YOU MORON YOU'LL BE LATE.. WAKE UP OR I'LL KILL YOU.. The voice was tremendous, I laughed so much :) but I most certainly wouldn't like to have such an alarm to wake me up! :) I arrive home with legs that were falling apart and that was supposed to be it.. No, my boss calls and says that he would surely like to see me if I can come.. ok later.. in the meantime I have adrenalin rushes, pains in my stomach, some hot flashes and weird chills.. My dad comes back from the cottage house, VERY NORMAL meaning not drunk AGAIN.. knock on wood. My uncle calls and says he needs a surgery, his thyroid has to be cut out, so my dad starts explaining how that thing is done, and I learned even more stuff to enrich my enormous hypochondriac medical knowledge. When chills subsided, I got up and went round the corner to see my boss. He expected me earlier, now he was going to have a visit. Ok I say, I am leaving then. No no, please stay. Staying was the most weird thing I could have done because the old man who came was.. well it is simple to say incredible. He brought with him some fish stew as he fishes a lot and heated it right there in the office :)) I heard my boss before talking about him and saying that he had 9 lives, like cats, but I thought he was joking. well he wasn't joking. This man is 75 years old and he had: 1) massive stroke 10 years ago which left his left side of the body completely paralyzed, but with time and lot of practice, he recovered pretty much; 2) gangrene on his foot so his thumb was cut off; 3) 5 years ago while fishing, instead of the fish he caught an electricity wire with his rod and solid 20,000 volts shook his entire body – a man who was luckily there knew for sure he couldn’t touch him, so he grabbed a huge wooden pole and banged him on his shoulder to detach him from the wires, he detached him all right, but the consequence for that benefit was a pretty fierce fall, banging against asphalt and breaking 4 ribs.. he wasn’t aware of that spectacle as he was clinically dead from all that electricity, but was reanimated later and the burns were taken care of; 4) when he finally though that nothing more was to come his way, he had a massive heart attack at the beginning of this year after quitting smoking cold turkey (he was smoking more than 60 cigarettes a day for many years, but I am positive it didn’t happen because he stopped smoking, but because of the clogged arteries) and he was urgently operated. Surgeons implanted NINE stents into his coronary arteries in March and told him that he will last another 3 months at most. Having 9 stents in his chest, he is a unique case in Southern Europe and a rarity even on this planet.

So, he does seem to have 9 lives, as those 3 months expired in June and he is still here, not only that he is here, he is even saying that he was getting healthy is these past months and that now that he is healthy (?), so he will do everything to stay that way. One hell of an attitude. Not only that he doesn’t care about previously stated “incidents”, he recites poetry he wrote, still goes fishing a lot, he drives a car and drives many miles to buy organic food, he is like a true aristocratic encyclopedia of the past decades when he talks about his neighbor who was raised in a noble Saint Petersburg’s family with 5 governesses. I came home with “no comment” expression on my face and was like shaking my head as if I were drunk to chase away the weird feeling. My mom was like – What’s the matter (now)? and I was like.. nothing, it just seems as though I came from another galaxy. The man had all the worst life-threatening conditions altogether, so if I were to say how I am feeling, the thought “I am ill, I have anxiety” would seem totally ridiculous. You really can’t die before your time truly comes.

OK, so that was supposed to be the end of that weird day.. NO! One very weird person I know calls after something like 3 months, he is very funny and everything and totally avant-garde sort of man, a singer who plays guitar as well and tries to sing songs from Naples in Belgrade, I am not exaggerating if I say that it is close to offering pork to Eskimos. He usually has funny stories to tell and sings and laughs over the phone so I had a feeling of being “high” once again from all that fast talking, laughing and singing. The best thing was when he told me that one his friend got all hooked up onto some fraud fortune teller who calls himself Ruben and who opened some sort of “academy” to enlighten the lost souls. Well it sounds like a true sect with only scope to steal people’s money. He was telling me – You haven’t heard of the Ruben Academy? It’s some 10 miles from downtown, right next to the restaurant “Silence of the lambs”!!! I had to laugh out loud like crazy but also to warn him to watch out not to be “silenced” by that Ruben guy in his “academy”…

So finally I get off the phone and start thinking.. boy and I was convinced that I was a nutcase?? Either world is nuts, or it’s me, always dealing with strange people in my real life.. I tried to sleep, but that weird mixture of panic because of the appointment, much more benzo than I usually take, shopping, walking, poetry with erotic connotations from a man who is alive against all rules and Ruben academy next to the place called “Silence of the lambs” just had to ruminate through my head in the silence of the night, needless to say that my sleep benzo had no effect at all. I was in dead silence all right, but my head seemed to be tuned to the loudest, as though all that people and their voices were actually shouting around me. That happened before when too many things happen in a single day, so I don’t pay too much attention to that “symptom” any more. I fell asleep right before the dawn and had such a vivid dream of my uncle’s funeral and me saying, I can’t possible attend it, I HAVE ANXIETYYY… Jesus.

On Tuesday I was “shooting the movie” – HORROR IN THE GROCERY STORE, I tried to do the shopping with only usual home benzo dose and I can say it was very impressive, I couldn’t focus my eyes in front of the dairy products fridge with the brightest lights on the planet and I could sense the eyes jumping, as though they would pop out of my head. I was sticking my nails into my hands and jumping from one leg to another and sure as hell couldn’t see my favorite yogurt that was sitting right in front of my very nose. After that I entered the post office with my mother (I feel like her dog, I should buy me a leash or something, I cling onto her as though she were my walking respirator) and was panicking quite a bit, I couldn’t stay calmly in one stop, I kept moving around. The clerk who attended my mother gave me smiling look and I was immediately like – there, smile, as though I were normal and everything were normal, I wonder if you would be smiling if you knew that I feel like I’ve just felt into a cage with lions in a zoo and only thing I can think of is HOW TO ESCAPEEEE…. But instead of screaming all that as I was most certainly ready to do, I just smiled back. :) I felt like those musicians playing on the deck of Titanic while it was irreversibly sinking, trying to ignore the catastrophe. I get hold of my home and sigh with relief, but my boss calls. AGAIN. No reciting this time? No, I need you to come because I need an advice. WOW. Who needs an advice from a crazy person, I thought. SHUT UP, YOU’RE NOT CRAZY! I go – well, I am not sure if I can give the right advice, what is it about? He goes – you are surely the right person, just come. OK.. maybe he wants to show me some designs for installation or he wants to purchase some device, so I go in a relaxed manner, as I pumped out my week’s supply of adrenaline in the grocery store and post office. As I was entering his office I could tell he didn’t look right, but hey everybody has a stressful day.. I sit down with an innocent look waiting for designs or catalogues so that I can give my “priceless” advice and he goes – you know the man who owns this representative office for these extremely expensive devices in our country? Sure I do, from sleazy magazines and so-called charity missions and fashion shows where the rich people pose with that “I have everything so all of you who don’t, drop dead” look. Well that man offered my boss to run completely the entire business with equal share for rents and taxes! Sounds great right? It would if the business weren’t in great debts and if the guy didn’t say that if my boss doesn’t accept the proposal (everybody else refused), he will close the representative office by the end of December. What do you think, my boss says too me.. What do I think? DESPAIR AND BLACKMAIL in short. He is obviously desperate to get rid of something that is not making profit (this is a poor country), blackmails that he will close the office so my boss won’t have those rich clients any more who’ll find him easily if they need repairs or installations, and he carefully wrapped up all that in a golden foil. Unfortunately, immediately when you scratch under the surface, the rot comes out. He has the good name of that foreign company to boast with and that’s it, so he wants the fish (my boss) to bite, attracted by the dreams of nice life and glory.. On the top of everything, my boss says – maybe I can even consider to accept, but only if YOU give me a hand, in a form of unconditional help as a full time job… ahahahaha… I told him – even if I accept to work 12 hours a day which I can not, even in my wildest dreams, because of my private reasons, we would need 4-5 more people, sick perfectionists and maniacs like you a me to try to pull this business out of gutter.. do you see them around? Are you aware that you’ll be the only one investing your lifetime savings in this? I know each business is a risk, but here the benefit/risk ratio is like 10 to 90, I never thought you were a gambler.. do you seriously want to put all your money on one card? If you do, let’s go to Vegas, why do we have to drag the sleazy Mr. Richman out of his problems? And seriously my boss is a common repairman, he is very intelligent but has no proper school education or much real life experience with dealing with those who want to take advantage of you, how come if the thing is REALLY tempting and nice, nobody else accepted and how come Mr. Richman wants to get rid of that, on the top of everything with 30 days ultimatum? God it stinks. And God it is so very unclear who would run what and who will be broke in the end, no wonder really. My best advice was – business, and life in general is like a game of chess. You can step out to the next row only if properly secured by other strong figures; it’s the only way to make that checkmate, and your position my friend is a very insecure one. He stepped towards you secured by elements of temptation, “friendly” offer and ultimatum and has other businesses to fill the possible holes, in my opinion if you make that step towards him away from your comfort zone, all the chances are that he’ll eat you up. And with your perfectionism and sense of order, that anarchy that rules there will end with your nervous system, no matter how strong it seems to be.

I came back home and shook my head once again.. I am “dying” everyday and now I am even supposed to be giving big time business advice? I retired safely to my “dying and going crazy” state, happy because I don’t have to deal anymore directly with those bastards who take advantage of common people.

On Wednesday rain came down and blackened the sky so badly that the light needed to be turned on from morning till night, I was down from all that sleepy weather but agitated as well, very strange mixture. I forced myself to walk down the street to the bus station with my mom to buy a book about the Patriarch’s life and I managed to do that without many problems, but during the rest of the day I was a nervous wreck which culminated in the evening when I literally fell apart with nervousness and crying, some people here will know what I am talking about, but it’s nobody’s fault and I know that people who care about me just mean well and want me to be healthy and happy, it’s just me, sinking down to feelings of depression, inadequacy, inability, thinking I’ll never accomplish anything ever again in my life. I am fighting so badly, but still the truth remains – I am 33, still in the same room I’ve been in since I was 4, I have no family of my own and no perspective I’ll ever have one, no house of my own, no proper job apart from some translation and phone calls from my bedroom, I mean I don’t want to underestimate it as I know how bad the crisis is right now and how many people don’t have ANY job at all, but it’s still 5% of what I could be doing if I hadn’t panic and anxiety. I need babysitting when I am in and “supervision” when I go out, and I just waste days, months and years.. Those are facts and I can’t see how I can change them. Maybe and most probably I can’t, but Wednesday evening was just a very bad time for practicing acceptance.

Today I woke up at 1.15 p.m.!!! with such a bad derealization and coma state that I thought I must have taken two benzo pills by mistake, I couldn’t bring myself to senses and when I did, I of course panicked because I couldn’t exit the damn coma and had such a bad knots in my stomach that I didn’t eat properly till 7 p.m. Very healthy schedule for anxiety diet indeed. I felt so down and inadequate even though I had to make 3 business phone calls – if those people saw me in the middle of my messy bed with teddy bear pajamas on, I wouldn’t have any sort of job any more, but thanks God we still don’t normally use video calls and I can fake my voice pretty well, maybe I could make a career in Hollywood with all the pretending I have to perform every day. I am actually in the role of someone who is perfectly ok and has no problems in the world other than those usual ordinary ones, and I act every single day. Pity they don’t give Oscars for that. Later a bit of chat helped me regain some perspective and some of my despair disappeared. So the cycle continues, I went all the way down, so maybe I can start climbing. Once again.

So everybody, have a great rest of the week and thanks for all the support. You ARE helping me, don’t have doubts about it, and that’s the only thing that matters.

All the best!