the living dead
June 16, 2017
I don’t remember when I wrote this piece. It came from a dark place, twelve levels underwater, with no light coming through.
Please keep a friend nearby to help pull you back up.
I am already dead.
My life, of late, has been suffocatingly dark.
I haven’t been to work for some months. The Monday, the first day of the last week, I went in. I had a panic attack in the lab, and I left. I went home and tried to breathe. The Tuesday, the second day of the last week, I had a panic attack in the lift, and I left. I went home and tried to breathe. The Wednesday, the third day of the last week, I thought about having a panic attack, and I couldn’t breathe.
When have you felt the most afraid?
The rush of adrenaline, jaw wired shut, nostrils flared with each pounding breath, the dull buzz in the crevices of my brain that something, anything - everything - is wrong; so very, very, very wrong. It builds to a roar and I can’t move, can’t feel anything but the panic, the clawing need to get away. Fight or flight; but the fear is so strong, the choice looms so large and I can’t move, can’t fight myself, can’t fly away from myself.
I’m afraid of the cancer. There is no all clear, no cancer free. There is a constant drone, a hiss, that it’s there, that it’s back, that the scar will spill open, and I will come gushing out. The war is endless, and I don’t choose the battles. I wake in the night, frozen, unconscious. They attack in the kitchen, with my partner, with my best friend, with my brother; and I wonder how it looks to see someone tormented by their own mind, trapped behind eyes crushed closed, watching from outside the room. There’s nowhere to run - and I am so very afraid.
I am afraid of being afraid.
Light has faded and the night becomes an eerie shadow scape. I haven’t slept since Saturday, and part of me worries that this writing is just a phase, that it’s just mania and I’m bipolar. I have a Psychology degree, I should know. Psychologist often joke that they are just looking to diagnose their own problems. I like the sound of that world.
I ask why. It comes with the anxiety. If I’ve thought of the worst case, I can prepare for the worst case. What could be worse than what lurks in the depths of my mind? It cuts both ways though; what’s the best case? What is the best life I can imagine for myself? It involves being alive, at lease. And if I’m alive, and I’m really living, it involves a different mindset. It means rebuilding the parts of my mind that I dropped while holding it together until the first surgery, the second surgery, the next surgery; the parts of my mind that are still fixed in that doctor’s office, trying to understand why she wanted to know if Westmead was a convenient place for chemotherapy. The parts of my mind that still don’t believe that it was genuinely a misunderstanding, because those definitely don’t happen in the real world, to me, a man with anxieties. I can’t see the future for all of the cancer.
I’m afraid of dying. We all are, I think. Maybe you can get to death without confronting it, if you approach suddenly, or you’re so lost in the moment that you don’t realise you’ve arrived. I can’t. I spent so long trying, rearranging, maintaining, just to hold on. There’s nothing firm to hold on to, and I’ve lost my footing.
Don’t go back to the carpet store. That’s the only rule.
We’re all dead. My life is diseased, and it’s lethal. I am afraid to die as I have been living.
I don’t think life has any inherent value. I don’t think my life has any inherent value. I avoid. I avoid the panic, I avoid the sadness that my life might always be filled with panic, the depression, the sadness, the tears. I avoid eating, showering, dressing, moving. This is my life without connection. My most basic connection - to myself - has frayed; it’s barely a tatter. The things I want to be able to do - to talk, to learn, to move, to share - depend upon connections; my connections.
I’ve thought a lot about the world I live in, and how to survive in it.
I’ve thought a lot about the world I want to live in, and how to create it. ' I’ve thought a lot about what matters to me. The things I want to do, the things I can’t do right now, the things that bring me joy and move. Mostly, though, it’s the people.
I am not afraid to die. Death would be so easy, the ultimate avoidance. I try to avoid the panic, and I’m so far from knowing where I want to be that I’ve become apathetic. I am afraid, so terrifyingly afraid, of living a life trapped by the fear.
It’s already back.