Page 22 of Hypothetical Heart
“Yeah,” I reply. The two of them are the reason I’m in this position. I mean,what were they thinking?
I look at him, searching his face for any type of indication of this severity. Of course, his facial expression shows nothing but fatherly concern.
Most people would assume that growing up with a doctor for a dad means that he would constantly be concerned about my health. As if I grew up drinking vitamin C packets and green smoothies and didn’t have birthday cakes or sweets.
In all reality, my dad is certainly more laid-back about sicknesses than most other parents. That’s because he knows exactly how to handle it, and he’s been around it so much that it doesn’t scare him.
“Why?”
“Usually, panic disorders have some type of trigger.” He places a hand on my back. “Was there something that made you panic?”
I try to remember the moment I started to feel the panic take over, and I can’t. It didn’t seem like it was one moment that set me off. It was a combination of them all.
A tear drips down my cheek. I didn’t even realize I wascrying. “I felt like I was trapped.” Iwastrapped. “Then my chest started to feel tight because I couldn’t get out, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“Were you scared because the closet was so small?” Dad asks as he uses a finger to wipe my tears.
“No.” I’ve hidden in smaller spaces when playing hide and seek and never been afraid. “I was scared that I couldn’t do anything to get out.”
“You didn’t like feeling like you weren’t in control.” He puts the pieces together, and I nod. “That’s common, honey.”
“What do we do now?” I ask when he hands me a tissue. I use it to wipe my tears before blowing my nose.
“We’ll talk about it if it starts happening more. Right now, it’s not a problem.”
Part of me wonders if he would say this to his patients—try to ease their fears—or if he’s only sugarcoating something to his daughter so I won’t freak out.
I hope he is telling the truth and everything is going to be fine.
Maybe it was just a one-time thing; maybe it won’t happen again. That’s all I can hope for.
End of flashback
As I got older, I knew that it wouldn’t just be a one-time thing.
Every time I’ve gotten stressed and started feeling the air tightening in my chest, I was taken back to that time in the closet.
Panic comes naturally to me, more naturally than math or ballet. It’s a reflex built into me,waiting for some type of trigger.
Whenever I feet out of control, like there’s something I can’t fix, I panic.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, honey,” my dad told me when I came home from school after a bad test, crying until I couldn’t breathe.
“Lots of people experience this. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said when I fell out of a turn at my ballet recital. I felt like a failure.
“It will pass. Just try to breathe,” Dad cried with me as I broke down in the hospital when my mom died. I didn’t want to breathe because when she died, part of me wanted to die too.
When I was sixteen, he asked if I wanted to go on medication.
When I was seventeen, I became so depressed he told me it would probably be best if I got off the medication.
This cycle has been endless my entire life, and I know it’s never going to end. Nothing can permanently take my worries away. There is nothing to change the way my body naturally reacts to any sign of stress.
Now, here I sit in the car with Logan after I ruined everyone’s night. Nothing feels right.
But Logan squeezes my hand. The same way he did after my ballet recital and at my mom’s funeral, and I knew everything would be okay.
7
