The Long Journey Through Night, II: 20 Years Before My Past

As I reached adulthood, I realized how much I’d done in my teens to keep people at arm’s length, how temporary a solution it all was. I dismantled the outward trappings of the persona and tried to find my way to social connection again.

I did. I found dance. I danced with thousands of strangers. I found friends. Lots of them. Around the world. Friends found me high paying prestige work. I was connected, I was successful. I finally felt like an adult. But the panic was coming back, slowly. And there was no longer a persona to hold it at bay.

A panic attack hit me my 30th year. A month later, another followed. Then two weeks after that, a third. Six months later, I was having around three a day, every day. My thoughts turned dark. I left work and sought help.

But all the help offered no way out. Every time I sought to stretch again, regain something I’d felt I lost, panic would return, ever more powerful than the last time. I retreated time and again, but all that does is make life smaller each time I fall back. My life became one room. And the nightmares of holding doors closed returned.