I got one again, this time at Old Navy. It has almost happened before at this clothing emporium: something to do with the lighting and the fact that I can still smell the sweat off the backs of the tiny children making the clothing. All that cheap-ass stuff that is always on sale…all those bright lights, that kid over there that is pulling all the shirts onto the floor while his mother is trying to calm her screaming baby…the breathing comes hard. I feel as if my head is absorbed into a tiny white bubble of light, albeit one without very many air molecules. I leave my would-be purchase (how hard is it to just find some stupid pants that fit my son, jeez, why do I come here, ever?) on the counter and walk out the door.
Panic attacks can strike anywhere. For many I think this is what public speaking does, or piano recitals, or just any average day of junior high. I only ever get them while shopping.
Except the first one.
I got the first one before my shift at the public library. I had a good excuse, sort of. I went on a date with a sketchy dude, knew him for approximately three hours. He then decided I was the one, and stalked me at my library job every god-damn day. I was told there was nothing that could be done, if he wasn’t actually talking to me or touching me. He wasn’t. He was just sitting there, watching me work, taking notes that he would put in his briefcase before he left. My work performance fell. I asked to work the stacks in the basement. This was also depressing: assholes would regularly put half-empty beer bottles in the book drop and then I’d have to clean up the soggy mess of books, which is kind of like book murder if you ask me.
He’d repeatedly call me, I’d find him across the street from my house, not actually staying, just sort of…loping by. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this kind of behaviour has happened to almost EVERY WOMAN I KNOW in some form or another, and I plan to have a serious talk with my kids one day about how to never be one of these creepy-kinds and how to avoid them. (Lesson one: If they have a briefcase that they carry everywhere, it is not a charming and eccentric tic. It’s just fucking weird, and get out fast, or don’t even go there in the first place.)
So yeah, one day I was ready to go to work, and I just sort of fell apart. I couldn’t go, I couldn’t even call them, I had my roommate call in for me. I heard her say something about me not being fit to come in… and I quit a week later. As for the panic-inducing jerk, he wrongly followed me into my pub of choice, where all patrons knew of his existence. The biggest of my guy friends sternly let him know it was time to leave and never come back, or bother me again, ever, because they all knew where he hung out, just as another guy I knew stole his briefcase and left out the back door with it. Am I proud of that? I shouldn’t be, but it did solve my problem. Implied violence can sometimes be helpful. And I never said anyone should steal his briefcase, so I wash my hands of that one.
But he opened the door to the white room, or should I say, the padded room in my brain, where the Panic button lives. It is not a red button, it’s white: the white you see before you have a fainting spell.
IKEA is another place I’ve had it happen, because sometimes you just need a shitty bookshelf, you know? And a pot holder. And those clip things for open bags of chips. And small votive candles (50 of them).
![You can just stay outside in the tall grass. You don't have to go in.](https://i0.wp.com/www.erinmacnair.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ikea-300x168.png?resize=300%2C168)
You can just stay outside in the tall grass. Catch your breath a little, you know, before you leave.
So, yeah. One day I’m at IKEA, and it took me a long time to get there because of traffic, and I’m waiting in line with my cart full of random junk (see above) and my head starts to do this expanding and contracting thing, again like a bubble without air. Suddenly things are much brighter than they were a second ago. People are louder, but blurry around the edges, like a record playing at the wrong speed. I start to think, why am I here…as in, do I need this crap? As well as the universal, Why am I here? bigger question, which throws me a bit because I am at IKEA and not likely to get any real results or insight at this current moment…and it blurs into one large existential mind twerk. With that, I pushed the cart off to the side.
I’m out.
I don’t wait for the elevator but instead escape down the ramp that never works. Two children start to follow me and I think yes…run away children! But their Mom says, “No, not that way, that way is for furniture.” This seems appropriate, that I am either runaway furniture or running away from furniture which makes me laugh and breaks the spell. Now I am just average taking-the-wrong-ramp kind of crazy, and can breathe again.
I get home almost two hours after I started the trek, and my husband asks me what I bought.
“Nothing,” I say, “I had a cart full but then I had a panic attack and escaped.”
He tilts his head a side to the bit, perhaps considering the savings.
“That’s okay,” he says, which is absolutely the right thing to say.