I Am Elmo Dumpster Fire
A smiling puppet in a sea of flames.
Oh fuck,
I'm having a panic attack.
I was at a storytelling event, seated in back of the audience with friends. It was Thursday night, I was drinking a pint of Dark Matter and didn’t want to be there. I wrestled in my chair and kept moving my bag from the floor to over the seat back and down again. My outfit was tight and uncomfortable. I wasn’t firm or solid in my chair. I brushed this off, “You’re fine. Just chill out. Take a sip of beer.”
But I’m not fine. My life is rife with:
Death; My sharp 86 year old neighbour died in her sleep after a long illness
Violence; A 10-year-old girl in Gaza crying through my Google home speaker
Suicide; Writing about burn out, depression and suicide then having to discuss it
Loneliness: Kiska, the last captive orca in Canada dying alone
Mortality: Hanging halloween skulls decorations and curious what my skull will look like when I’m gone.
It's always hard for me to decipher a panic attack when it first happens. Suddenly, the world feels infinite, large, and endless, and then my vision becomes tunnelled. I can only see what’s right in front of me; a 64 year old man with white hair and a blue paisley shirt speaking into the microphone about his racism. My heart is a trapped wasp buzzing against my ribs.
When I experience a panic attack, my immediate response is to flee. But this week, my good girl upbringing rose up, “you wouldn't want to be rude by running out of the room.” I took deep breaths hoping the storyteller would finish soon. I just stared at the blue paisley shirt and focussed.
I breathed in.
I breathed out.
I heard the first audience claps and leant over to my friend, “I’m having a panic attack. I have to go outside.” He looked alarmed and concerned as I stumbled through the crowd. I felt ashamed. I imagined the internal mutters of the crowd, “That’s so rude she’s leaving,” “It better be an emergency.”
After struggling to find the exit door I crept down the stairs gripping the wooden handrail and sat on a bench by the street. I took deep, fresh air into my lungs and my toes relaxed, then my heart began to calm.
I am an acquaintance with panic attacks. We’ve met five, now six separate times. The last time was seven years ago at a Depeche Mode concert where I imagined a bomb exploding. My husband talked me down from fleeing the Seattle Centre.
Each time I’ve experienced a panic attack I have been overwhelmed. And instead of turning out for support, I turn in and tuck my toes up against the edge of my duvet and wish it all away.
I am Elmo dumpster fire. A smiling puppet in a sea of flames.
It is completely normal AND
It is completely ridiculous.
It is fucking insane AND
It is fucking gorgeous.
After a few more storytellers presented, my friend came outside to check on me. We decided that a walk and food would be our best medicine.
While sharing an okonomiyaki pancake my friend told me about the last speaker; a man who told a tale of extreme violence in Ghana. During this story a woman in the audience broke down in unapologetic grief. She wailed and crawled behind the bar. She lay down in a fetal position where others soothed her with their hands.
That woman is not me.
That woman is also me.
I wish I’d been brave enough to let my panic turn into grief, to share my conflicted world and self view with others at the storytelling event. But I felt great shame in my inability to handle it all.
I feel deep shame at not being able to neatly put my feelings away in discrete boxes.
I am physically safe, fed, loved AND have overwhelming shame that I’m not okay.
Instead of shaming, drugging or compartmentalizing my feelings I’m just going to let them be. I'm going to have all the feelings. I will stop instinctively tossing them over my shoulder into the raging dumpster fire.
The dumpster fire is still raging, but I don’t need to fuel it anymore.
