I break through the hush in the room because it’s my turn. I am awkward, in the medium between child and adult, and trying to find my way to the person that is me. Normally I relish the chance to perform, always wanting the biggest speaking part or sweetest solo in junior choir. But on this day, the silence is too big, my voice too alone. I know that I have to start, and once I do I can’t stop or I’ll look foolish.

Every desk is facing me, as is my entire sense of worth. It is more than I can handle and it’s closing in so fast that my heart speeds to catch up. I feel out of my body, detached from anything but the fact that I’m on show. So I do the only thing that will connect me back to myself. I run out of the classroom.

“It’s my skin that is difficult to escape.”           -Ann Voskamp

Over a decade and through a thousand more episodes like this one, I’m sitting in therapy angry, drained, and desperate for answers. I’d pleaded with God to take it away, I’d been to counseling for years, and pretty much tried everything short of bleeding out, though that seemed like a viable option at the time.

“It’s very manageable. Don’t worry, we’ll tackle this,” the psychiatrist tells me. I nearly break at her words. Thank. God.

Panic disorder. It is part of me. But it’s not who I am.

At my worst I’d have ten attacks a day. I was scared to make phone calls, avoided study groups. In college I dropped out of courses (though I forced myself to do public speaking and barely survived), or simply skipped projects that required my stage presence. I remember calling my counselor at one point, my second child just a tot, and asking her if this was something I should be concerned about.

“I would be worried if you were having one attack a day. Ten is a problem.”

Well okay then.

It took the right doctor, the right medication at the right dose, and some serious cognitive therapy, which are just fancy words for stare it in the eye and don’t back down. It’s a “God, hold my hand every step because I just don’t know if I can do this,” kind of deal.  

The truth? I will always have this. It will float around in the background of my life until my hair is silver and I can’t stand on my own feet without help. It’s a genetic predisposition on my mom’s side, which is comforting that if Chase gets fed up with me and sends me to the loony bin, I’ll have company. 

It takes some kind of strong to be with a person who goes through days of anxiety. That just needs to be said.

Also the truth, I don’t have to let it control me. I make the decisions around here. Like cancer or diabetes, it’s a daily choice to stay as healthy and vibrant as I can. There are good days and hard ones. Setbacks and progressions.

But I choose to fight, and “live life to the fullest.” -Jesus