It was 4:37 in the morning, and I hadn’t been to bed yet. Instead, I’d spent hours pressing two fingers against my jugular, obsessively timing how many beats per minute my frantic heart was racing through. Then I’d worry that my body didn’t know how to regulate my heart rate; that eventually, it would get exhausted, and I would have a massive heart attack and die; that it might be days before anyone found me, because I was living alone in Dallas where even my “emergency contact” at work was more than 45 minutes away. I knew none of it was rational, but it didn’t matter - it was my normal.
When I started having panic attacks in my final year of grad school, I was convinced that something was horrifically, medically wrong. I had a full work-up done with a cardiologist - several EKGs, an echocardiogram, and week-long stints of wearing halter monitors around the clock to see what my heart did during “an incident.” It all came back perfectly normal - normal, except for the fact that I was having as many as 3 episodes a day where my heart rate neared the 200s for hours on end. The nurse tech stared at me, incredulously: “You function like this?” Yeah…kinda. The cardiologist wrote it off as anxiety, and sent me on my way.
It was anxiety - and I knew it was - but having my body respond to even imaginary threats in such a real way was terrifying. I grew withdrawn, and felt hopeless. I tried everything to get my panic attacks to go away: I ate better and upped my exercise. I stopped seeing suspenseful movies in theaters. I crawled into bed between my very understanding sister and her new boyfriend on many nights. I even downloaded Gregorian chants to play at bedtime, which I hoped would relax me, but ended up just making my room really creepy and tomb-like (so the complete opposite of helpful). Nothing worked.
I had a massive panic attack during my own wedding ceremony. Then I had another during my sister’s. I actually had to leave the altar to sit down in the front row for a moment and compose myself. “Get. Up,” my mother hissed. I was so ashamed. She wasn’t trying to be mean; she just didn’t understand. I didn’t understand either.
Eventually, I learned the importance of distracting myself. I kept a journal on me at all times, and whenever I began to panic, I just wrote - stream-of-consciousness - anything that came to mind until things felt under control again. I found that journal again recently - it’s unintentionally hilarious.
“Do you think you should go buy more oranges after work today? I don’t know; last time you bought oranges, you didn’t eat all of them, and that’s such a waste. Maybe you could make orange juice? Not that you even really like orange juice, but maybe one of the roommates would drink it. Maybe you could have it for brunch! Brunch is nice. You like breakfast tacos. Remember how they call breakfast tacos ‘breakfast burritos’ in New Mexico? What’s up with that?”
It’s books upon books of this, guys. Riveting stuff. But it worked! Writing til I gave myself carpal tunnel became my coping mechanism of choice during the day - but what could I do about night, when my anxiety was often at its peak? Easy - television. I started watching a stupid amount of really stupid TV. Netflix wasn’t a thing yet, so I had to go with what happened to be on at 3 AM - and nothing good is on at 3 AM. I’m not proud to be one of our great nation’s foremost experts on Maury Povich, but I think I probably am one.
One night, as I began my nightly ritual of scrolling through the endless, awful viewing options, I came across something interesting. It was a marathon on Logo of a show called RuPaul’s Drag Race, which, judging by the description, basically sounded like Project Runway for men in wigs and tights. “Sold,” I muttered. “I’ve certainly watched worse.”
5 minutes in, I was hooked. I was introduced to a cast of characters who went by the likes of Sharon Needles and Jiggly Caliente and Madame LaQueer. There was higher hair and tighter spandex than I’d ever seen on any biological woman who isn’t Dolly Parton. Eliminations were decided completely on merit: you either “lip synched for your life” or you didn’t. Best of all, I learned this: You cannot be anxious while you are watching men in makeup and feather boas compete for $100,000. It is impossible.
Nights were more than bearable - I actually looked forward to them, especially after I landed on a favorite queen: the incomparable Latrice Royale. Latrice (aka Timothy Wilcots) is a 6’4’’, plus-sized, black man who is somehow also a warm, motherly, hilarious, and inspirational woman. Asked in episode 2 by RuPaul about the hardest thing he’d ever encountered in his life, Latrice answered: “Honestly? I guess it would be when I went to prison.” Latrice detailed her time in prison, how it changed her, what it taught her, and how she turned her life around because of it. I found myself crying - at a show about men in makeup and high heels.
On the season finale of the show, Latrice was crowned “Miss Congeniality,” and gave this piece of advice to all watching: “I want people to realize it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to fall down. Get up, look sickening, and make them eat it.” I thought maybe I could do that for myself.
5 years later, I have. I’ve learned coping mechanisms for my anxiety that mean I haven’t had a panic attack in over a year. I’ve changed jobs and cities, got married, paid off more than $50,000 in student loans, bought a house and a car, and had a daughter. Latrice told me I could do it, so I did.
Anxiety will likely always be a part of my life. I still worry too much, and I still have to work very hard to keep it in check. But now, instead of wallowing in self pity and sleepless nights, I find I can more easily pick myself up, dust myself off, look at myself squarely in the mirror and quote from the good book of Latrice Royale: “Five G’s, please: Good God, Get a Grip, Girl.”