“With your feet on the air and your head on the ground,
Try this trick and spin it, yeah.
Your head will collapse
But there’s nothing in it
And you’ll ask yourself.
Where is my mind?” ~ Black Francis
It began again sometime past three in the morning, in the stillness of a hot August night. I was awoken from a dead sleep with my heart pounding out of my chest, not entirely unheard of after a night of drinking, but this was different. As best I can describe it, it was like taking an edible that was too strong. I felt like I was going to start hyperventilating at any moment. There was discomfort in the right side of my chest but not pain, nor anything running down my arm so I was fairly certain this wasn’t a heart attack, though I had to keep telling myself it wasn’t. Irrational fears began to creep into my head, like being freaked out by a lamp above my desk being on and my bathroom door being ajar. I could feel an odd coldness going up the back of my head, which began to feel heavy. My thoughts turned darker as my heart continued to pound. This is it, at any moment I’m going to feel a stabbing pain in my chest, suffer a heart attack, either that or a massive stroke and nobody is going to find me until Monday afternoon, slumped over dead in my recliner wearing nothing but a pair of ratty old shorts. My mind felt like it had input delay, I’d want to look right or check my phone but it would take a few seconds before the command was heeded. In the middle of all of this I dragged myself off my recline, compelled to go scrub my toilet because I was afraid the paramedics and police who found my body would judge me for having an unclean bathroom.
I continued to feel panicked by innocuous things and dark thoughts, debating whether I should go to the ER or not. I certainly couldn’t drive there, I could pass out behind the wheel and kill somebody. I thought it was too early for an Uber and didn’t feel that I could wake my family with this, so I determined to wait until the buses started running. Hours dragged by and nothing helped, not even my beloved music. Eventually the sun rose, my heartrate gradually fell and passed out, utterly exhausted. I would awaken some hours later with nary a sign of what had happened, like it had been a mad dream. These are the sorts of things I’ve come to expect since anxiety entered my life, and let me tell you it has been one hell of an adjustment.
I don’t know that I can exactly pinpoint when I began to experience the symptoms of anxiety, but my best guess would be the spring of 2020. I had been dumped by a woman I was in love with, and that rejection was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced in my life. Covid-19 then came into the world and I ended up getting furloughed from my job, beginning my own sort of lockdown. On top of that, I had to deal with a significant mouse infestation in my basement studio apartment. For weeks on end, my world shrank until I was entirely consumed by heartache, fear, and mice. The first time I tried driving to a big grocery story was also the first time I had an anxiety episode. I was driving up Route 15 in Essex Jct when I suddenly found myself short of breath, feeling like blood was rushing to my head and that I was going to pass out. I got panicked by the approaching traffic light and the exit ramps from I-289. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why this was happening, I’d rarely experienced this level of fear before, and what was I even afraid of? I managed to make it to the grocery store parking lot in one piece, and sat in my car for a few minutes trying to make sense of what had just happened. Maybe this was a reaction to going to a big store for the first time since lockdown? I didn’t know it yet, but I was already developing an anxiety disorder, though it would take a long time to figure this out.
For a while there, I thought these episodes were part of some sort of heart condition. One of the facets of my episodes is heart fluttering, and at times an irregular heartbeat, if my home BP monitor was to be believed. Anytime I started to feel “weird” I would sit down and run my BP, and sure enough there would appear a symbol for an irregular heartbeat being detected. This has happened enough that, over the past three years I’ve had four different EKG’s run, including sporting a super comfortable halter monitor for 48 hours. And yet, each of those EKG’s came back normal. What the hell!? This can’t be all in my head, I’ve physically felt it in my chest, and yet I have no way to substantiate it. So I felt like I was left in the dark, not knowing what was physically going on with me and beginning to question whether or not I was losing control of my mind.
For whatever reason, my symptoms seemed to manifest most often when I was driving. Again, this made little sense to me. Save driving on wintery roads or in big cities, I’ve always enjoyed driving. It’s why I was able to make it down to New Jersey so often to see family and friends. Even though it was five and a half hours each way, I enjoyed hopping in my car and cranking up the music, specific curating playlists for the occasions. I was increasingly finding however, while there were times where I could drive for hours without issue, there were others where I needed to pull over within fifteen minutes because I felt so uncomfortable. I thought at first it might be my vision, having steadily lost the ability to clearly read any road signs by 2020. So I went to an eye doctor and got prescription glasses. I could see much better but it took time to get comfortable driving with glasses. Then I thought I had an epiphany. It was August of 2021 and I was driving down the Jersey Shore to attend my Cousin Owen’s wedding ceremony. I was initially concerned about the trip and driving down by myself, but the drive to the wedding went well, aside from some stress at the end, but that could be chalked up to bad shore traffic, taking a wrong exit and dodging scattered thunderstorms. Then I did what I usually do at family weddings, and liberally imbibed without getting wasted. The drive back up to Vermont was truly painful. Despite knowing exactly where I was going, traveling highways I’d driven for decades I was in a state of anxiousness and, at times downright panic the entire drive. I would suddenly freak out when a tractor trailer came near, even though nothing abnormal was happening. I thought about how I felt for days after getting home, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t drank anything the night before the trip down, but had several drinks at the wedding. Perhaps it was the booze.
Flash forward to April of 2022, when I left my job of more than four years. I had come to this decision the previous October, sitting on a worn picnic bench, spewing out words faster than my mind could comprehend them to the HR person I deeply respected and the boss whom I cared for like a father. I loved them both, and the team of supervisors who really had become a work family. But after years of on-call scheduling and seemingly unrelenting stress I was at my wit’s end, and felt I had no choice but to step away. I had also planned a cross country road trip after I resigned, one I’d been dreaming of since I was 22 years old. Naturally, because it was one of my trips nothing went the way I had originally planned. At the start, I was going to be driving through the southwest and planned to head to San Diego to stay with my best friend Ari, for an indeterminate amount of time while I figured out what to do next with my life. As it turned out, Ari had her own crossroads moment and ended up moving and embarking upon her own cross country journey that same summer. That plan out the window, I then gave consideration to camping out along the coast for a while, shifting my view north to the Redwood Forests of Northern California. Then I got to know more about California camping permitting than I even thought I would, finding that by even January there were no permitted camping spots left in any of the state parks I was looking at. I thought about just buying the gear and setting up a camp somewhere off the beaten path and roughing it. That idea was romantic for all of a few days until I realized that I was no Thoreau, weeks without a shower or an indoor toilet would drive me crazy and, knowing my luck I’d end up getting a huge ticket for illegal camping or attacked by a wild animal. So now what?
It was then that I began randomly searching for little towns along the Northern California coast, eventually settling upon a tiny Airbnb cabin, nestled just off the Pacific Ocean in Humboldt County, California. It was mid-May of 2022 when I set out upon my adventure, the first real solo adventure of my life. What I didn’t know was that the storm I would drive through on the first leg of my trip would be a harbinger of what was to come. I was just south of Albany, cruising down the New York Throughway when the black clouds closed in from all sides. The rain pounded so hard that my wiper blades couldn’t keep up, even slowing down to 35 mph. Lightning crackled on either side and the wind blew so hard you’d think there was a vacuum the size of a sky scraper sucking all the air up behind my car. I was poised to drive across tornado alley during peak storm season, and here I was not even out of upstate New York dealing with this nasty little brute. I ended up pulling off the interstate and sitting in the parking lot of a rest stop as hail pelted my poor car.
The strange thing is, after the storm passed and I returned to the highway I didn’t feel any residual aftereffects. That might have had something to do with missing the rest of the scattered thunderstorms on my way to Philadelphia, but I didn’t feel anxious at all. I ended up spending a couple of lovely days with my aunt Ginny (Blue Ginny, my late mother’s beloved and eccentric older sister). From the third floor of her townhouse I made my final preparations. I had originally planned to spend two of the four nights it would take to cross the country sleeping in my car at highway rest stops to save money. Then I found one of the spots I had planned to rough it in Wyoming was going to be 20 degrees with a chance of snow when I drove through. I ended up just booking hotels for the other nights. It was just past noon on May 20th, with plans as set as they were gonna get, that I lit out for the west.
The first day of travel was easily the smoothest, the sun was shining as I drove through (and occasionally under!) the rolling green hills of Pennsylvania. It reminded me of road trips undertaken when I was a younger man, filled with music and singing and the romantic notion of the adventure unfurling before me. I was so ebullient in fact, that as I rolled into my hotel in Ohio at dusk I didn’t mind at all that my room was directly facing a huge refinery. What did that matter? I was feeling better than I’d felt in years, completely freed from any commitments other than those I made to myself. That night I went to bed with confidence that this trip was going to be everything I’d hoped it would be. The next day I would trek through the rest of Ohio, Illinois and across the Mississippi River into Iowa. It may seem quaint, but to me it was incredible to be driving through places that I’d previously seen only on maps or in media. I ended up taking a seemingly innocuous picture of a highway sign at a highway rest stop, indicating keep left for Chicago and right for Des Moines Iowa. I was really out here, smack dab in the middle of the country, just me and my car, measuring ourselves on the road as so many adventurers before us had.
I remember my energy started to flag driving through western Illinois. The sun had disappeared around noon, and no matter how good the tunes, driving by oneself through endless flatland, under unrelenting gray skies is enough to take the starch out of anybody. Then I saw the signs for the Mississippi River. Crossing over the river on the I-80 bridge, I looked out and, well if it hadn’t been for the signs I wouldn’t have thought it any different from dozens of waterways I’ve traveled over. I was a bit further north than Huck Finn ever got, but still here I was, crossing over America’s most mythologized waters. I was west of the Mississippi now, and just as exciting was being in the same state as my hotel room. Not far into Iowa however, something unexpected happened. With no warning or identifiable stressor, I began to feel lightheaded and unreasonably anxious. For the first, but not the last time during this journey I pulled into the breakdown lane of a highway to collect myself. I didn’t understand why this was happening. I hadn’t had a single drink in three weeks, any withdrawal symptoms surely would’ve presented before now. I had my eyeglasses and custom prescription sunglasses so could see the road and signs just fine. Aside from being a bit tired I wasn’t stressed about much. Every day’s driving was well planned, the GPS my girlfriend at the time helped me install on my AC vent was working. I was well fed, well supplied and not short on funds. What on earth could be the matter?
I managed to drive the rest of the way to Des Moines without further incident, but I was deeply unsettled by the time I made it to my hotel room. I stood in the shower a long while that night and tried to dissect the problem. Had I consumed too much caffeine? Sure I went through four or five cans of Cherry Coke Zero, but that was on par with a longer workday for me. I hadn’t slept great the previous night in Ohio as the motel pillows sucked, but fortunately I had brought along my own pillows owing to my abandoned sleeping in car scheme, so that could be easily remedied. I was in bed by midnight (that’s early bird for me) and ended up getting a decent night’s sleep, hoping that rest and drinking mostly seltzer the next day would be sufficient. But by the time I got out to the car that morning, I already wasn’t feeling well, and that feeling would only get worse throughout the day.
To begin with, Iowa has more wind turbines that I’ve ever encountered in my life. Stretching almost to the horizon, I found myself thoroughly unnerved driving past them. I began having bad thoughts, of catastrophic accidents and had to reassure myself that I wasn’t within 500 yards of these things and my mind was being nonsensical. I thought perhaps they were distorting my depth perception and upsetting my equilibrium, so I did my best to look straight ahead. Then I began to focus on the endless stream of 18 wheelers I was swimming through. Again I thought this might be something to do with depth perception, because as I would get closer to a big rig my eyes would be more bothered and I would feel anxious until I passed them. But what could be done about that now? I was more than a thousand miles into a six thousand mile trip, and the truckers weren’t going anywhere. Despite driving through breathtaking grasslands in Nebraska and the sun coming back out, the entire day was absolute misery. Still trying to troubleshoot the problem, I felt perhaps I might be dehydrated so I began drinking cans of seltzer like it was my job. Between the frequent bathroom breaks and needing to recollect myself after bouts of unsteadiness and anxiety spikes I stopped at least ten different times that day, needing to pace around rest stops and gas station parking lots until I wasn’t so wobbly.
By some minor miracle, I made it over the Wyoming boarder to my hotel for the night. I had been concerned about winter weather, but most of the snow fell in Colorado while my path only got a minor dusting. Small comfort as I settled in for the night. After the usual checking in with my girlfriend, and posting seemingly cheerful photos to Facebook, I needed to seriously assess my options. I could try taking backroads all the way to the Nevada/California boarder (my drive through California would involve almost no interstate driving) but that would take much longer, and I’d likely have to give up at least one night at the Airbnb cabin if not scrap the whole thing. I wasn’t about to turn around either. I’d come too far and sacrificed too much to make this trip happen. No, I was going to make it to California if it was the last thing I did. I felt I had but one choice, to push forward despite the sense of dread creeping into my mind. This was all becoming very heavy, certainly not what I was hoping for when I set out on this journey.
That night I decided upon taking a hot bath, hoping it might ease my anxiety somewhat. I thought about the twists and turns my life had taken up to that point, the mistakes I’d made, and the little victories that kept me going, at least for a while. I posed myself a question that I took very seriously under the circumstances. If I wasn’t destined to make it back home, if tomorrow or the next day was to be my last, could I honestly tell myself that I’d done alright? Or would my life be more defined by wasted opportunities than anything else? For the record, many subsequent sleepless nights and anxiety episodes later, I can tell you I still fall somewhere in-between. The next morning I rose early, and as I walked to my car in the crisp, clear Wyoming air I felt this would be a make or break day. I wasn’t wrong.
It started out like the previous day, feeling unsteady and anxious for seemingly no reason. There was no possible way I could keep this up to California and then all they way back to Vermont, I’d crash and probably die before I got anywhere near home. Then I had something of an epiphany. I noticed as I approached another big rig my head tilted down to check my speed, and when I looked back up I felt the anxiety spike. What if my head movement was throwing my equilibrium out of whack? Having spent so many days driving now I could tell you my head got jostled around quite a bit. If I could only steady it. Then I remembered I had tossed a memory foam neck pillow in my backseat as an afterthought. Essentially what I did was reverse it and use it as a quasi-neck brace. That way it would limit jostling, force me to use just my eyes when checking my speed or the GPS, and keep my head as still and focused as I could. You want to know the darndest thing, it actually worked.
I don’t know if it was the steadying this pillow provided, like something of a safety blanket, or the fact that I tilted my head slightly to the left as I drove (there is a part of me that is convinced that my left eye is slightly higher than my right) but most of the anxiety melted away. Aside from looking somewhat silly to those who might see me driving, this little hack was comfortable but not so much that I got sleepy. It was just in time too, because the drive down into Salt Lake City and across the white desert below was the most breathtaking part of the entire trip, and now I was able to enjoy myself without worrying that I was going be in a fiery car crash. Incredible, a cheap little foam pillow had saved the entire enterprise, because there was no way in hell I could’ve made it all the way back home as I had been. To this very day, I still keep that neck pillow in my car incase it’s needed for longer drives.
I ended up making it to the California coast without further incident, and the day I hiked to the Pacific Ocean turned out to be one of the most spiritual experiences of my life. I felt so good about myself, I had faced adversity and found a way to overcome it through my own efforts. I was and still am proud of what I was able to do, but unfortunately it wasn’t the last time I would face anxiety during the trip. Driving back east I would be taking a detour to Minnesota, to visit my old friend Jake and his now wife Kathleen. Jake and I had somewhat lost touch over the past couple of years, so I was both surprised and delighted to be invited to stay with them. Of course, that’s when the weather turned. I’d been so incredibly lucky with weather, missing the snow in Wyoming and hardly having a single raindrop fall from Philadelphia to the Pacific Ocean. Seemingly though, my luck had run out.
I barely beat a nasty thunderstorm to my motel room in Wyoming, and checking the weather there was a heightened risk of supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes for eastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota the Sunday afternoon I was to drive through. I ended up watching too much coverage on this potential weather and working myself into a state. I set out for South Dakota that Saturday morning, the sun nowhere to be seen, and my anxiety returned with a vengeance. It was clear that the weather forecast had a great deal to do with this, which frustrated me to no end, because I’d been fascinated by tornadoes my entire life (still am) and felt that, even in the very unlikely event that I actually encountered one on the road I had enough knowledge to keep myself safe. But when it comes to my anxiety episodes, rationality and critical thought mostly fly out the window. At one point I had such a vicious attack that I was dry heaving on the shoulder of a Wyoming highway, shaking and unsure of how I could possibly go on. I was thousands of miles from home and help, feeling vulnerable and terribly alone.
I thought about staying in Wyoming for a couple of nights and letting the bad weather pass to the east before continuing on, and promised myself that if I had another bad flair up like I’d just gone through I’d stop at the next hotel I drove across and rest for a minimum of 48 hours. Little by little, I crept across Eastern Wyoming and over the Black Hills into South Dakota. (And no I did not stop at Mt Rushmore, because it defaces the sacred Black Hills of the Sioux Nation, stolen from them by the American government and, frankly, should be returned to them in its entirety). I then amused myself with the literally fifty old, wooden billboards for the Wall Drug Store. I happened to be staying in Wall, and joked out loud about all the claims the billboards made. I did actually end up going to Wall Drug (even the woman at the front desk of my hotel asked if I’d been there yet) and, essentially I found it to be a tourist trap, but I’m sure lots of folks love that place, and I’m kind of a cynical asshole so take that as you will.
There would end up being a tornado in Southwestern Minnesota the next day, but I was long gone, already in the Minneapolis metro area by the time it touched down. I was on the road before 9am and drove like a bat out of hell. Despite having a good deal of residual anxiety and not feeling great, I masked it sufficiently and still ended up having a lovely visit with Jake and Kathleen, including getting so sucked into a 4th season episode of Stranger Things that I was shouting at their tv (I suspect some of you can guess that moment). And despite another uncomfortable anxiety episode driving through Wisconsin, I was able to make it all the way back to Vermont without much incident. I was hoping, now back amongst my things and with no need to drive long distances in the foreseeable future that my anxiety attacks would be left on the road. They weren’t.
I had two attacks at work that summer where I almost lost consciousness and were enough to scare me into trying strong anti-anxiety medication for the first time in my life. It was a bear adjusting to the meds that first time, and I went over two weeks averaging less than 3 hours of total sleep every single night. Medication has helped somewhat, I find that I laugh and am able to laugh off far more than I ever have, amongst other things. But there have been trade offs. Where I once didn’t really care too much about heat, (I spent more than a decade relishing runs or walking 9 holes of golf on hot, late summer afternoons for the exercise) I am now much more affected by it. I’ve also developed tics that never existed before, like making grunting noises throughout the day (when I’m alone they’re rather involuntary but for whatever reason it hasn’t happened in front of anybody yet). I seem to squint my eyes really hard when I’m feeling anxious trying to sleep or when my eyes bother me during the day. I also have moments where, unable to describe it better, it’s like I’ve been momentarily unplugged. I’ll be in mid-conversation with somebody and then be completely pulled out of it, like “oh I’m talking with this person.” The same thing can happen while I’m driving. It’s a fucking weird feeling.
I also seem to struggle with life’s more stressful moments. I had a period last summer where, within the span of a couple of weeks I went through a difficult breakup, my father had a mini-stroke and I caught Covid-19. This resulted in one of the worst anxiety attacks of my life as described in the opening of this essay. I had another bad attack this past December, the morning I found out my ex-girlfriend Cait had been killed in a car accident. I spent that morning throwing up at work and was in bad enough shape that my good friend (and boss at the time) Maria sent me home in the middle of a very important meeting because I was visibly in no shape to continue. There have been episodes since then, but thankfully no attacks as bad as those from 2022.
This year has not been particularly great for me either. It started with some genuine optimism, and the promise that perhaps there was something very special happening. However, my sweeping transatlantic gesture fell spectacularly flat (Ireland was still a rewarding experience though). To top it off, not two days back from this emotionally difficult trip I found out that I’ve been forced out of my job and now find myself unemployed. I’m turning 36 in a couple of days, as always dealing with the complicated history of my birthday and finding myself at a particularly low point. So why am I publishing all of this, revealing this deeply personal illness?
I felt compelled to write this article to partially explain why I’ve been largely absent and silent from most people I know. It’s not that I don’t care about you, but with anxiety ever present, on my mind every hour of every day, it leaves me with precious little energy for much of anything else. I’ve changed around medication regiments and hope to one day retain even a portion of my old energies, but I have to accept that I’m going to have limitations going forward. I hope you will too. I also wrote this in case somebody reading this also struggles with anxiety. I want to let you know that you’re not alone, and this illness doesn’t make you weak or a lesser person. Time is uncertain, and one never knows what their allotment will be, but regardless of how long that is, know that you are strong, you are special, and don’t let anybody, including yourself, convince you otherwise.
