I took a semester off from college between Kenyon and Eugene Lang, which meant that I ended up graduating midyear. But because Lang was too small to have a graduation ceremony for people who graduated midyear, I had already been out in the working world for what seemed like forever (six months) by the time graduation and all the attendant festivities — which I imagine seem anticlimactic even under ordinary circumstances — rolled around. I will always associate sunny cold spring weather with that time in my life, which means, I can’t relate to you people who love this time of year at all. For me this weather resonates with the special kind of terror you feel when your brain and body betray you, which I felt then for the first time.
What happened was, I was invited by a classmate whose name I can’t even remember to a graduation party at her parents’ Central Park South pied a terre (they lived mostly in Napa). I remember I wore a pastel dress from the 50s that I’d bought at a flea market. In the gleaming white daylit room my yellowed pink dress definitely read as ‘used,’ not ‘vintage,’ and probably my hair could have been cleaner. My classmate wore a green silk dress I’d seen in a magazine. There were trays with blanched asparagus spears and there was a person who had been hired to come around and endlessly refill your glass with champagne. I wandered from room to room, looking out of the massive windows and wondering if I would ever even visit an apartment this nice again. It was on maybe the 20th floor, not high enough to completely miniaturize the park but far enough above the treeline so that the variegated bright greens of the treetops looked like a lush patterned carpet you could step out of the window and onto.
My own apartment at that time was in a tenement building along the upper reaches of Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint, right at the epicenter of the underground oil spill. No trees grew on my block, and there was a poopish tang in the air from the nearby waste treatment plant whenever it rained. I sat on the stoop of this building the next morning, dressed and ready to go, on the phone with my Mom, unable to either stop crying or move. I was supposed to go into the city and meet my family at the big New School graduation ceremony but I felt strongly that I couldn’t do this. I kept telling my Mom that I was sick, and I did legitimately feel that I was going to puke at some point. A disgusting champagne hangover probably had something to do with it. But also I had all these other, stranger symptoms, like, my heart was racing and my breathing was shallow and I thought that if I ventured off the stoop at all I would die. And I knew this feeling wasn’t rational but knowing that did not help. I tried to explain my impending death to my Mom, who encouraged me to suck it up and get on the subway, because it was my college graduation and I would regret having missed it and they’d come up from Maryland and everything. Now I can see my Mom’s point: if you’ve never had a panic attack there is no reason you would feel sympathetic towards someone who is having one because the thing is, there is nothing actually wrong with that person, and there is no possible way for you to understand how the panic-attack-having person is feeling. They always say they feel like they’re dying, for starters, which sounds so dumb and overdramatic. Long before I experienced the symptoms of what doctors call “anxiety and depression,” I would read descriptions of them in books and think, like, ‘get a grip, lady! Get up off the couch, nothing is wrong with you! Bell jar what?‘ Until you’ve felt the breeze of a 55 degree spring day chill the layer of clammy sweat that’s covering your body and looked up at the cloudless sky and felt like everything about the world you are living in, which appears so benign and pretty, is actually conspiring to squeeze the air out of your body and press you paper-doll flat between two heavy panes of glass, you won’t be able to sympathize. Which is fine, actually: I hope you never feel this way.
Five years and some therapy and three discrete interludes of this variety of feeling later, I am still figuring out what tripped my wires that day. The easy-ish explanation is that I had been pretending to myself that some legitimately harsh and scary realities were normal and okay, and some layer of my brain could not maintain this pretense any longer. Even though this explanation seems too obvious I think it’s mostly correct. It’s one thing to read novels and newspapers and “know,” about the world, that some people maintain second homes on Central Park South while others live in the park itself, but it is another thing to wake up every morning and rush to an office to answer someone’s phone in order to maintain your Nassau Avenue toehold in that world. And everybody (mostly) has to do this, but that doesn’t mean it’s not harsh.
I hadn’t thought about this day for a while and then last night I found myself very randomly at a stranger’s book party in an apartment where, from the living room window, the Tribeca skyline conspired with the building’s angles so that the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge were visible in the distance. When one of the sunburned gentlemen standing near the window drinking champagne asked me where I lived, I pointed and said, “Over that bridge and then you make a left.” His small talk was about the rules of petanque and about summering in Blue Hill, ME and wintering in (on?) Tortola. His job is “consulting,” which means that he sits out on the deck in the morning with his Blackberry doing emails for an hour and then he’s done, “thank you very much.” (He had a British accent).
I think at one time I thought of adulthood as a continuum of achievement that could potentially culminate in my becoming one of these people, which is extra bizarre when you consider that I have never shown the slightest interest in or inclination towards law, medicine, banking, or dating anyone with a greater net worth than mine (which is, btw, smaller than yours, assuming you have a job). Would I even want this, now? I don’t know. I don’t think so. For certain there is a species of elation that it’s only possible to feel in those giddy bubbles high above the city, but probably a lot of it has to do with longing and transience. And also I know now that money or status can’t confer immunity from that clammy feeling of impending death, because nothing can. That feeling can be fended off, though, with a battery of intangible possessions that are more precious than designer clothing or beautiful artworks. This is stuff that I think I am just starting to figure out how to possess.
Somehow this post contains the very contagion of a panic attack.
You’d make a nice trophy wife for a really really rich guy. Go for it.
i had fun at that party with those girls. and if i can remember their names i think you can too.
and i’m sure my outfit was way worse than yours. i did get really fucked up once we got to that suite at the gansevoort hotel (!) though. should wear a string around my finger to remind me not to chase booze w/ weed.
Bravo Emily! This is only the beginning.
Wow. Finally. I was about to give up on this blog, too. Now maybe I’ll stick around a little while longer.
found my mood (and mind) becoming tranquil while reading this…then the thought of how odd this was, given that panic and anxiety figured so prominently…emotion recollected…
Solid.
Rich.
@ Bennett, Meeghan and Jessie, ok. but I had to mind google it really hard.
I do like spring- I associate it with everyone running onto the lawn (dare i say Quad) with tank tops and blankets. Its like you have earned it through a long suffering winter. But hey, I am from the midwest. I am sure you looked great in your dress- though not everyone can appreciate the thrill of finding vintage like a Dior track suit at the Salvation Army in Mt. Vernon. Oh that which does not kill us…
Emily said:
“Until you’ve felt… like everything about the world you are living in… is actually conspiring to squeeze the air out of your body and press you paper-doll flat between two heavy panes of glass, you won’t be able to sympathize. Which is fine, actually: I hope you never feel this way.”
I too have felt the “panes of compression”. Emily, your sharing to others is the sound board of finding the depth of your soul. Finding your blog and reading your words have been therapeutic for my spirit. (I believe I wrote this in email to you some time ago)
Peace can be found in the written word. Inspiration and strength can be found in verbs, nouns and sentences. The written word has always been more powerful than those spoken.
In my wallet, I carry a piece of literature by Neruda. Over the past 8 or 9 years it has became frayed and tattered yet I will not rewrite the note. The yellowing paper and fragility are reminders of the state of where I “was” and what I have become.
Love, how often I loved you without seeing-
without remembering you-
not recognizing your glance, not knowing you, a gentian
in the wrong place, scorching in the hot noon,
but I loved only the smell of the wheat.
Or maybe I saw you, imagined you lifting a wineglass
in Angol, by the light of the summer’s moon
or were you the the waist of that guitar I strummed
in the shadows, the one that rang like an impetuos sea?
I loved you without knowing I did; I searched to remember you.
I broke into houses to steal your likeness
though I already knew what you were like. And, suddenly,
when you were there with me I touched you, and my life
stopped: you stood before me, you took dominion like a queen:
like a wildfire in the forest, and the flame is your dominion.
These words, as with yours, help me to breathe freely.
Sorry if my first comment sounds a bit ominous and cryptic. What I meant is, I like this piece, and I think our author will write even better things in the future.
I love how Bennett remembers these things with you!
I remember going to parties like the one you describe when I was that age. Somehow, I was so blank about it. I just thought it was very cool to get to see a place like that. Maybe it never stressed me out because I never actually thought I’d be that rich, so I never had any illusions to get shattered.
Hmmmm, if I had to choose between being squeezed, “paper-doll flat between two heavy panes of glass,” or living in one of, “those giddy bubbles high above the city,” I’d choose to just be average. But what’s average in New York, right?
That’s exactly what a panic attack is like. There’s nothing wrong but you feel like you’re going to die. Every time someone writes about it, it helps me feel like less of a freak. Thanks.
wow. so im a 21 year old college student. In just one short year i will gradute and…im scared. Here in Mexico, you are not expected to move out or make it big this young…or ever. Wich is even more depressing. Im the best student of my class and everyone expects so much. Wich is even more scary.
My mom doesnt get the panic either. Im glad someone does.
Thank you very much for this.
Another great post–I too suffered from several panic attacks in college that just didn’t make any sense. I was so worried about incidents with people that I had drama with that it just truly overpowered me–even though I rationally knew they weren’t going to physically hurt me, I just felt I couldn’t deal. It also wasn’t until I started experiencing this that I understood all those descriptions in novels, having been (and still am, to a degree) a “suck it up” person.
This was a fantastic post, Emily. Wow.
Having just experienced my first panic attack a week ago, which hit me really hard since I had no prior experience and thus did NOT know how to deal with it: tell me, did it just vanish after a couple of hours. Because mine didn’t and after three days of hell I gave up and had to take tranquilizers. For another 3 days. Today is my first day without. And I am THE “suck it up person” but somehow this time around I couldn’t take it anymore. i wonder why. so basically my question is: how long does it take, the attack? and is it possible to get through it without taking the meds? in the situation that you can’t just stay in bed and breathe it out but have to go to work and function?
thx.
A.
That’s just how I felt when the Cardinals lost the Super Bowl.
@A: oh god. Please please talk to someone about this who isn’t a blog.
Well, maybe, your superior writing skills in creating such vivid images, seem to be triggering, in some of us (among the infinite possibilities of responses to the themes presented and therefore totally unforeseeable) flashbacks. Powerful stuff!
Or like strobe lights to the epileptic, reading about panic attacks to the sufferer of panic disorder, maybe? Maybe not
@emily: that was way harsh…(although I do agree).
This is really well done. I especially like, and will always remember the phrase, ‘Bell Jar what?’ When is that book coming out, BTW?
Love this entry Em. (May I call you “Em”? Too late.) Thank you.
@melsy Thank you and also thank you for giving me an opportunity to clear up the Em issue: only members of my immediate family and Alex Balk have historically been allowed to call me Em. But actually Adventureland made it seem cool to be nicknamed Em so … hmm. I dunno. I think the rule is as long as you are not a condescending hater it’s okay.
Unrelated: am reading a book which reminds me of your writing: Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights (this is meant as a compliment).
It’s fascinating to watch Emily try out different things out on her readers to see what strikes a chord (it’s why I read her blog, among other things, I’m also curious what “works,” and why).
So far it seems that entries that are perceived as whiny or narcissistic fare badly–the poor-little-rich-girl syndrome–while posts that feature food are, well…meh, just filler.
Only essays that share some private aspect of her life seem to be warmly received (judging by the number of comments, anyway), and at the moment, only those that reveal some insecurity or vulnerability.
Perhaps misery really does love company after all (cliché alert!)
I wonder what would happen if the blog took on a more happy-go-lucky tone, a, “Gee whiz I’m young and pretty and talented and the world is my oyster!” POV, instead of a gloomy “I’m an old lady trapped in a young lady’s body” approach?
Would she lose us? Would the carping and the sniping and the hating begin anew? Is petty jealousy really the driving force in the online community?
This is so interesting to watch!
panic attacks. panic attacks. I could talk 4ever bout panic attacks.
@Ms Molly Lambert
great, great…….Just GREAT! hahahahahahaha
I love this:
“there is a species of elation that it’s only possible to feel in those giddy bubbles high above the city”
@Hal Jay Greene: I think you are partially right about what clicks and what doesn’t with readers of personal/confessional blogs like this one, but not because of petty jealousy. I think it’s because the vulnerable posts are the more honest ones and readers relate to honesty. I think a post like this one, which is lovely and evocative and moving, succeeds because it feel so authentic. I think, and as this post attests, that this writer is not fundamentally a happy-go-lucky person. Neither am I and they don’t really interest me. Most happy go lucky people are insufficiently introspective to write interesting blogs. That is not a dig–I would possibly choose to be happy-go-lucky if I could.
Good job, Em. Since we’re allowed to call you Em.
Please come hang out at Lang’s graduation this year, and stroke my greasy, panicking mid-year graduate hair. There will be a spot reserved on that church lawn for you.
@Audrey: I would respectfully disagree, although I understand the distinction is subject to a philosophical debate beyond the scope of comments in a blog. But happiness is a choice we make every moment of our lives [cue harp glissando, trilling birds, etc.] My experience of people who are chronically happy is that they come to this temperament through more introspection rather than less.
Is not bliss one of the goals of meditation? Why do you think Em (thank God we can call her this now!) does all that yoga? Just to keep her tats aligned?
As my mom used to say, if you are truly miserable, then you are truly miserable. But if you’re just miserable then you don’t have enough problems.
my favorite two words from this post: “poopish tang”
anywhoo, I can relate & we’ll keep finding ourselves in un-attainable manhattan apartments over & over again, so I just pretend that it’s mine for a while & make myself a little too comfy.
@Hal. I really enjoy your presence here but, I find your back-handed complements about Emily’s writing talent both annoying and condescending. I wish you would stop.
@Laurie, Sorry, but I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em. Just for the record, I really DO want to see Emily succeed! I think she has the talent and sense of humor to rise above the chatter and make her mark. I just don’t see it in her blog. But then, perhaps I’m expecting too much from the blog. Maybe it’s not supposed to be a showcase for her writing. Maybe it’s just…a blog.
One should hold oneself to the highest standard me thinks.