The Strongest Men I Know Never Said Anything

For the past week I've had one long panic attack.
Not lots of little ones.
One.
It felt like my brain chemistry had simply wandered off without telling the rest of me.
The strange thing is...
I haven't had one in years.
I've barely slept.
Writing has been difficult.
If you've noticed I've been a little quieter recently...
that's why.
Last night was the first proper night's sleep I'd had in over a week.
I slept like a rock.
I've always slept like a rock.
When I was a kid a pipe burst in our apartment building.
The fire alarm rang for five hours straight.
My grandparents were awake the whole night.
Apparently...
I slept through the entire thing.
Another time I rolled out of the top bunk onto a pile of toys.
The part that surprised me wasn't falling.
It was waking up in the bottom bunk wondering how I'd gotten there.
Sleep and I have always had a strange relationship.
Until anxiety shows up.
Then suddenly my brain decides sleep is optional.

The hardest part hasn't actually been the panic attack.
It's been talking about it.
I think a lot of us understand this feeling.
Men.
Women.
Anyone who grew up believing emotions were something to control rather than something to understand.
Some of us simply heard it more often.
"Suck it up."
"You'll be fine."
"Keep going."
You hear those things enough...
eventually you start saying them to yourself.

I sometimes wonder what invisible battles my grandfather was fighting.
Maybe he wasn't anxious.
Maybe he was.
Maybe he carried fears he never found words for.
Maybe silence was simply the language he'd been taught.
I'll never know.
I wish I could ask him.

People often say suffering in silence makes you stronger.
I'm beginning to wonder if we've been measuring strength backwards.
Suffering in silence is familiar.
It's predictable.
Nobody asks questions.
Nobody sees you.
Nobody can reject what they never know.
Trying to explain a panic attack while you're having one...
that's hard.
Admitting you're frightened...
that's hard.
Letting another person see you frightened...
That takes a kind of courage I don't think we talk about enough.

When I was a kid I cried all the time.
I honestly couldn't help it.
One sentence came up often enough that I eventually believed it.
"I'll give you something to cry about."
The strange thing is...
it worked.
Not because I became stronger.
Because I became quieter.
Now I hardly cry at all.
When my grandfather died...
I cried four tears.
Four.
Then something inside me quietly shut the gate.
I sometimes wonder what it would feel like to simply let the gate stay open.

One scene from Fight Club has stayed with me for years.
The narrator goes to support groups for illnesses he doesn't have.
Not because he wants attention.
Because for the first time...
he can cry.
It's a ridiculous idea.
Until you realize how many people don't know where else to put their sadness.

I don't blame my grandparents.
I think they carried things I never had to carry.
Because they carried them...
I didn't have to.
Isn't that what every good parent hopes for?
Not that their children become exactly like them.
That life becomes a little lighter.
Maybe every generation gets the chance to carry a little less than the one before it.
Maybe that's how the world slowly gets better.
Not all at once.
One burden at a time.
If no one knows you're carrying something...
no one can help carry it.
Perhaps that's what it has always meant to bear one another's burdens.

I don't have anxiety because somebody failed me.
Life is more complicated than that.
But I do hope that if one day someone I love is sitting where I've been sitting this week...
they won't feel they have to hide it.
Maybe they'll tell someone sooner.
Maybe they'll discover something it took me much longer to learn.
That pretending to be okay isn't always strength.
Letting another person see you frightened...
That takes a kind of courage I don't think we talk about enough.

For the past week I've had one long panic attack.
That's simply the truth.
I'm sleeping again.
I'm writing again.
I'm learning again.
Maybe that's all progress ever really is.
Not pretending the darkness doesn't exist.
Just refusing to hand all of it to the next person.