26

ANXIOUS

by N’tima Preusser

The electrocardiogram showed a lively pulse.

“My chest feels tight.”

My ribs fold into themselves in a braidlike motion toward a limited amount of space. My bones are tightening their grip until my lungs are deflating. There is a loaf of challah rising in my chest. There isn’t space to breathe here.

“I get lightheaded sometimes.”

My muscles and bones are detaching from my skin. My nervous system doesn’t feel connected anymore, and my head gets wobbly.

“I think I have a heart condition.”

I have already diagnosed myself.

The doctor talks to me like I am a child. He uses the words healthy, normal, flawless, strong. His hands are drawing pictures in the air to make things plainer for me. I imagine he’s seen people like me before. In the end, I leave with my demons on paper, hashed out in bold print: “Living with Anxiety.”

It is the same old story. I am anxious, and I am sure I always have been. I picture myself in my mother’s womb, agonizing over my very own entrance into the world. My body has never known when it is supposed to be nervous. A part of me wished an organ was failing so I would have something tangible to blame. I can tell you the exact moment it began to haunt me, the very moment I felt abandoned for the first time. And that single incident was enough to persuade the chemicals in my brain to shift right into the place in which they were created to live: unbalanced.

I was nine years old when I talked to the man, the shrink, behind the desk for the first time. He would shout across the room at me to make me battle my fears. He would pretend to be angry with me, furious, even, so I could retrain my mind to not dissolve in fear if it were to really happen with the people I encountered daily. I remember round salmon-colored pills I took in the nurse’s office each day to help balance the serotonin levels in my brain. I remember the panic attacks that would paralyze me before school. And I remember my teachers turning into monsters; it was as if they breathed fire. I was constantly afraid that everyone was going to hurt me.

Now I am a mother. And being a mother with mental illness is an art of balance in which I am always dizzy. My feet never feel planted into the ground. It so often means that I have to hold what is devouring me on the inside, destroying me even more. It means constantly trying to decipher the difference between normal “mother’s intuition” and plain old paranoia.

Does every mom prop her newborn in a specific position that will prevent suffocation in the night? Do they hold their toddlers’ hands with a grip as tight as a handcuff while they are walking in a parking lot together? Am I the only one that leaves the baby monitor on, blaring and bright in the dark so as to not miss a single exhale that leaves my babies’ lips? Am I the only one who doesn’t know if I am supposed to catch them or let them fall? Am I the only one who harrows over every mistake?

Am I the only one?

Then there’s a blurry line of in-between, where motherhood crosses over into disease and catches the pilot light of anxiety. All of a sudden a fire burns up in my mind. I have gotten good at keeping my outsides stoic when I am struggling, but my insides feel like quicksand. My nerves and my sense of reality will reduce to ashes before I can catch hold of them.

I am sitting across the playground from my oldest while she plays. I keep my distance because I know it’s good for her. If I were closer, I would help her too much and make her doubt her own ability to climb. So I let my worries eat away at me over here in private, under the tree.

It seems so loud out here, like the volume of nature is on full blast. I am excruciatingly conscious. I know just how far my little one has to crawl out of the shade before the concrete will burn her hands and knees. I know there is an ant pile under the bushes near the bike rack. The lack of control I have makes me feel nauseous. I am sure the other parents can see right through me. They probably think I am hovering. I worry about their eyes on me.

My daughter slips and falls through the bars of the ladder. Instantly, I envision her with a cracked skull, blood all over, brain swelling. I race over to her, but she runs right along as if nothing ever happened.

Because the fears in my head are not real.

This is always how it goes, though. I cannot help but to sift through every hypothetical scenario in my mind trying to find imaginary danger.

My baby will be burrowed into me nursing, quiet and full of peace, but all I can see are fictional bruises all over her body. At bath time, I see both of my kids drowning, flailing in terror, when really they are splashing each other and their laughs are echoing off porcelain walls. Whenever we leave the comfort of our home, I am sure I will accidentally leave them in the scalding car, and their organs will boil in their tiny bodies. Whenever I am alone, I am panicky, first thinking I have forgotten them somewhere. That nightmare haunts me even when I am sleeping.

These sick thoughts harass me whenever there is a breach of confidence. Everything is always turning into monsters.

I fight anxiety every day. The fact that it never thoroughly dissipates makes me feel like a failure; but I am not a failure. For the first time in my life I have something louder, something bigger than anxious whispers and heckling panic. And that something is the love I have for my children.

Although my brain might be incapable of functioning perfectly, my heart isn’t. My heart is healthy, flawless, and strong. My heart is what fills my babies’ bellies, what tucks them safely into bed, and makes sure they breathe all throughout the night. My love for them is what gets me out of bed when the earth is too alive, and it is what hushes the demons when I lie in bed at night. This love loosens the grip on my lungs and reconnects my nerves to my bones. The strength of my heart makes up for where my mental health lacks.

So I will keep fighting their monsters, and I will continue to fight mine; because they are my voice of reason—no match for any demon—and I am their warrior.

THE fears IN MY HEAD ARE NOT REAL.