Often I get so anxious I start shaking and crying and my breath gets really short and fast. It is usually associated to my brain convincing itself that it should stop piloting an alive body and that the world would be a much better place if Emerson Borakove was in a tomb. The frequency of these events waxes and wanes. It usually correlates with stressful (or at least perceived stressful) events but sometimes it just shows up suddenly. I have tried to quell these waves in many ways in various coping mechanisms to many degrees of efficacy. Below I have listed some methods. (It is important to note my goal here isn't to provide options for those looking for coping mechanisms, or to make myself seem like some kind of tragically obsessed with her own sadness masturbatory songwriter. Mostly just documenting my day. This is a personal narritive for my own sake. This is context for the song above that I wrote entirely for myself.)
I guess to start with using drawing as a coping mechanism is tricky. You start making shapes and it feels like you are in control of yourself again. You are making little pictures. You can draw Snoopy and Snoopy is the friend of all. But the ideation creeps up on you and suddenly your pace quickens and you are drawing smaller and smaller pictures and the page starts looking like a deviant art vent post.Just a bunch of “Help!” scribbled everywhere with scary drawings of yourself and you are back where you started but with a sharp object in your hands.
For me most forms of mind altering substance just increase anxiety and therefore are off the table for calming me down. However. Poppers I have found very effective. Summer 2023 my coping mechanism of choice was to listen to “Isn't She Lovely” by Stevie wonder and hit a bottle of rush as hard as I possibly could while making out with my fist pretending it is my husband who loves me. This works surprisingly well but if you do this as consistently as I was you suddenly have a new issue of constant ringing headaches! Not great long term and also kinda silly if you think about it.
Most forms of media I find to vary in ability to keep me sane. The issue is with any one piece of media is that they sort of wear off after enough viewings. For example Fall 2023 anytime I had a panic attack I could put on the movie the Secret of Nimh and it would set me straight. This was wonderful. I could imagine myself as a brave little mouse. One who had wonderful beautiful children that she loved and that loved her and a tragically dead husband. I could be hit with the early death blues and in response lull myself into sleep via a regressive childlike haze. But this magic spell stops working after one watches the Secret of Nimh 5 times in a month sadly. And finding the next movie, or album, or book is no easy task and usually is a surprise. Recently “Regular Show” kept me sane, a show I never really responded to before. Maybe I'm developing a nostalgia for my “boyhood”. Whatever.
Writing occasionally can help me cope. Often it is good to just have a record of what I was feeling so a year or two later I can look back and say “Holy shit was this bitch sad” Sadly this method does not lead to beautiful heartbreaking essays or sonnets, it is mostly trite bland works. An interesting thing I have tried was writing myself into ideal lives and perfect fantasy scenarios. For example I would write stories where a boy would take me on a really nice date, thoroughly going through each evnet. And if I was feeling really needy I'd write our engagement and even our deaths. This became an issue as I was moved to actually mourning my fake dead husband.
Here is a real example of how me trying to write myself out of a panic attack from July 22 2023:
It would start with him waving me over outside the met
He would say I look cute in what I was wearing and it suits me like matches my hair or exuberance or something
Then he would pay for me not even letting me have a chance, I’d thank him and he would brush it off like it’s not big deal we would walk around the met for a bit and talk about art and it would be fun and then he would hold my hand in front of a painting and smiles and then we would walk around for the next hour holding hands the whole time
Then we would go for a walk in the park and he would buy me ice cream without me even asking just cause he thought I’d like it and then we would sit at a bench and talk for an hour and eventually he would put his arm around my waist and let me rest my head on his shoulder and tell me what that he really thinks I’m beautiful and that he really cares for me
Then we would walk to to a book store and look around for a while and talk about books and I would smile really big at him and he would kiss my forehead and I’d blush
He would notice it’s late and that I’m hungry and take me to a restaurant and he would pay just cause he loves me so fucking much and wants me to be so happy I can’t deal with anything
And then we watch a movie in each others arms and we are dating and I love him and he loves me and he treats me nicely and I don’t want to kill my self anymore and everyone I know likes him and he lets me cry In his arms and he pulls me close to him when we sleep in the same bed and he has a nice air conditioner and then we move to providence and he kisses me and I don’t want to die anymore"
Often this exercise led to more tears as it gave confirmation to everything I wanted or needed in that moment and let me feel artificially what those things would feel like having.
There have been periods where I have been obsessed with the notion of paying for someone to take care of me emotionally or fulfill a role in my life that has been absent. In Winter 2023 I made a Craigslist ad to hire one actor to pretend to be my boyfriend and two actors to pretend to be my parents. The scenario I wanted was to introduce my parents (who in this fantasy support me) to my boyfriend who in this fantasy truly loves me. Part of the scenario was that I was going to make dinner for everyone and part of the rules were that everyone had to tell me they liked the meal even if they didn't. Craigslist took the ad down within the night with a message that that was not what their website is for.
Today I felt a really bad panic attack coming and I played a song into my laptop while my roommates were cleaning the living room around me and I added some layers and wrote this little thing. I am not sure if it helped but as I write this sentence I am okay. I do not want to die. I want to live even if I forget briefly that I do. Just because I forget I want to live doesn't change the overall arc of my life is towards wanting to live. A lot of 2023 I called a suicide hotline everyday. The quality of many of these of phone calls were dubious but I couldn't afford a therapist and didn't have anyone in my life to talk to. I called them because I wanted to live. I wanted to live but didn't trust myself to make that decision. I needed someone to convince the part of me that was in pain to not turn the machine off just yet. I am better now. Word of honor. I am better now.
