Woot

I have cake! Wonderful cake! It's really good cake, too, if I do say so myself. Though I can't really take credit, it came out of a box--but I'm the one who put the frosting and all those pretty little sprinkles on.

Yay, cake!

I'm watching House right now. Cuteness in Azumanga Daioh continues and in Naruto we're onto the next arc, woot. Man, does that show ever do villains well. I thought Orochimaru was the scariest villain ever, but man, I think Itachi takes the cake--something about his coolness, his total lack of emotion. I mean, Orochimaru was just creepy. I wish I could write villains like that.

Well. Stuff and things.

And Around We Go

Suppose I accept this theory: there is no reason for it.

Well, obviously that's not entirely true. There's a reason for everything--anything that doesn't seem to have a reason just means we don't yet know what the reason is. In basic terms, I have a seratonin imbalance in my brain, coupled with irrational fear, dementaphobia, hypochondria, and intrusive thoughts that I tend to give too much meaning to. Those are all sufficient causes. Yet I can ignore the dementaphobia, the hypochondria's gotten better, I'm learning to ignore intrusive thoughts, and I'm taking pills for the imbalance. It's true that this whole thing is going about the same route that it did when it first began--valleys and peaks, with a series of almost constant peaks, then a slow descent back to relatively normal, still with occasional spikes. In completely technical terms.

And I'm not completely naive. There's more to it than just treating it with pills. Panic disorder is something that needs to be worked through. I'm done expecting immediate results. And it's true they've gotten far less frequent. But even Kate admits that there's technically no treatment for panic attacks. She's on antidepressents just like me--stronger ones--but as far as I know they don't work perfectly. Nothing is perfect, especially when you're talking about something that has no reason.

I mean, that's the definition of "irrational." Without reason. And no one really knows the causes of panic disorder. Family history is part of it, and I hear other relatives have anxiety problems, yes. Trauma is another thing, but as far as I know that's not a factor since nothing has ever happened to me. It's probably just coincidence that they started the summer after 9/11. In any case, 15 years old is around the time they present.

I do have a point. My point is that I always look for meaning, for causes, for reasons. Gift and a curse, I suppose. When I have a panic attack despite taking my meds, despite taking the Clonapin as a booster, despite not drinking coffee today, despite not having consumed pseudophedrine in the last several months, despite not being anywhere near that time, and despite not having anything jarring happen lately, I don't like the fact that there seems to be no reason. Why today? Why now? Why so suddenly? Why does it happen this way? I go weeks and weeks of being totally fine, then a day randomly--completely randomly--pops up where I feel shitty. And I've been happy lately. A little bored...and maybe that's a factor, it always has been...but happy.

I monitor all the causes, I've taken down what can set me off, and yet sometimes days come where there's just no explanation. It's not like the Lexapro isn't working, it is--things have gotten very much better since only a few months ago. The counseling helped too, and I should probably be looking into finding a counsellor here.

But maybe the conclusion is simple--there is no reason. I've had this thing for five years. The trigger was, I read one of my brother's graphic novels, and that night weird images flashed through my head. I became convinced I was going crazy, and that was my first panic attack. It had been waiting to happen, I'd been anxious and a bit paranoid for some time, I was even considering I was going crazy. Completely irrational. The mere thought of schizophrenia still scares the shit out of me, but it's manageable. I just try to counter the irrationality by being rational about it, though it doesn't always work.

I reallize I'm rambling. But my point is that, maybe there is no reason for the panic attacks. Maybe they just happen. The idea scares me, but really, what's so scary about it? These things can't kill me, can't drive me insane. My chest is all cold and my pulse is up and I'm fidgeting and just generally anxious (go figure), but I know that tomorrow, or the day after, I'll be fine again and get back to my routine of not doing anything and ignoring the whole thing.

In essence, this is something I have to live with. The Lexapro might eventually stop it for good. I'll probably still have panic attacks on and off, maybe even major spikes where for months I'm anxious due to some stupid, errant thought, on into my early twenties until my hormones level out or maybe even for the rest of my life. It's been five years, almost exactly. I've got to come to terms with the fact that there probably is no reason for it, that they'll continue to be random like the textbook says they're supposed to be, and that there is no cure-all for this, at least not at this point in time, or until I can accept, fully and completely accept, that errant thoughts really don't mean anything, that I'm not crazy and in all likelihood will not go crazy, that I'm not demented, and that panic is just a thing. Something from our deepest lizard brain, a reaction to exterior stimuli, something developed to help those cavemen survive mammoth and sabertooth tiger attacks. It just chose me to go haywire with.

Completely random, completely irrational, and therefore, completely without reason. I've got to accept that, before it's too late, because it's true that this disorder can kill me. It's the panic that has caused these last few months to be completely without progress in terms of writing. I haven't written that much since Christmas Break, when this started, I haven't progressed in terms of my style and my handle on writing. Nothing has changed. I might even be taking a step backward. I can't write when I'm panicking, or I just choose not to for fear that somehow, writing will set off the panic. Not so irrational when you consider that's what triggered this most recent bout--I had decided on a particular backstory for a character, and the fact that I chose that particular backstory ended up frightening me, so much so that I haven't been functioning at 100% for the past several months. If I don't do something soon, my writing will continue to fail. The writer in me might very well die. And I don't think I could survive without it. It's the only thing I'm good at, the only thing I can see myself happy doing with my life. This disorder is killing my writing.

And I refuse to let that happen. I'm going to take charge. Fight back. So there's no reason, so the Lexapro and even the Clonapin won't work every day of the week. Virgina Woolf was severely depressed and wrote amazing books. Edgar Allen Poe was a drug user and an alcoholic, and yet we have "The Raven." Fitzgerald couldn't hold onto a woman and had and had an alcohol problem. It's part of being a writer. We hate ourselves. We're a bit crazy. We have active imaginations, which can lead to more than just a great book. Writers drink, do drugs, commit suicide, have mental problems. It comes with the package, if only because we choose a life of relative solitude, if only because we choose to live in a fantasy world for a good portion of our lives.

So I'm not going to be scared out of writing anymore. There are certain areas of writing that I'm not ready to touch, that I'm afraid of getting close to, but maybe that will fade with time, and even if it doesn't, who cares because I don't have to write in those particular areas. Whatever. I won't let this thing kill the one talent I have. I'm a writer, that's what I am. Maybe not a good one, though hopefully one day I will be. The panic attacks may never go away, but I asked myself once if I would rather have the panic attacks or lose the ability to write. Hands down, I would rather have panic attacks every day of my life than be unable to write.

I know, I'm being overly dramatic and overly philisophical here. This is one day--and it hasn't even been all day, just the last few hours--out of about two weeks of non-anxiety. I'll be fine tomorrow, and even if I'm not, I'll be fine the next day. The body can only stay in panic mode before so long. Even when I'm convinced it won't go away, it eventually does. That's one of the beauties of panic attacks, why it's better than other psychiatric problems, because even when things are really shitty, things always get better eventually, and tend to stay that way for long enough to get things accomplished. Until I can fully kick this thing, if I ever can, I'm content with that.

Forgive the long post. I needed to get it all out.