That Time I Had a Panic Attack at the Airport (reflections #10)
“Ma’am your bag will not fit in the overhead bins, you’ll have to check it.” Says an indifferent airline employee as I hand her my ticket to get on my flight from Los Angeles to Toronto.
“Are you sure?” I plead.
“Yes. Please step aside.”
My palms are sweaty. My voice stammers. I feel a lump in my throat. My breathe becomes more and more shallow. This bag has to fit on this flight.
“Wait, let me see what I can do!” I drop down to the ground and rip my bag open in the front of the line for a full flight. As my vision becomes spotty and my breathing more shallow, I grab at high-heels and make-up and try to stuff it all in my already overstuffed carry-on backpack.
My hands begin to shake. I can barely see at this point. I am about to have a panic attack.
“Amanda, we can check the bag.” Evan looks desperate like he too knows that this is about to get out of control.
“We cannot check the bag!” I screech in response.
People stop and stare. Part of me knows that my actions are out of proportion to the situation, but that part of me, the logical part, seems so far away from the tyrant who has taken over my actions.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. My body shakes as I continue to pile items all over the floor.
As the feeling of panic continues to rise within me, the thought creeps in… I don’t want to go to this wedding.
But, I shoot right back at myself with another thought…I have to go to this wedding. I am in this wedding. I am an adult and I will go to this wedding. I do not have a choice here.
Tears fall from my face. My shaking turns into sobs and I realize I am sobbing in the airport while people stare at me.
Part of me begins to berate me – Don’t be that girl Amanda. You’re just doing this for attention. Don’t be so dramatic. This causes another part of me to sob harder from the cruelty coming from my own mind.
“Ma’am please move over to the side.” The indifferent airline employee speaks as though she sees this type of meltdown every day. This is not an everyday occurrence for me though. Would she believe me if I told her that?
Tears continue to fall down my face and my mascara gets in my eyes. Evan grabs my stuff and an employee escorts us over to a corner of the jet bridge where I can put my stuff back into my bag to be checked. But, my bag has to fit on this flight. It has to.
My hands are shaking and I am hitting my stomach with my left hand in a jerky manner, the way I do when I am overwhelmed. I am now sobbing and I think I’m yelling at Evan, but I am also in the middle of dissociating and am disconnected from my body and my actions. It would be years until I understood what dissociating felt like – so here in this moment I feel myself begin to become hysterical as I disconnect more from reality.
Getting this bag on this flight feels like life or death. I have no logical reasoning other than my nervous system cannot handle another unexpected challenge.
I am on my way to a wedding. I am a bridesmaid. I love this friend, but her wedding couldn’t be at a worse time in my life. A month earlier I sat on a beach and thought about killing myself and now I am pretending everything is fine while I am so clearly not fine. But, this is her wedding, there is no time for me and my feelings.
I knew the wedding would contain endless small talk. Something I could no longer participate in. As most people discussed their jobs, the weather, and judged one another, I was stuck in an endless loop of grappling with childhood sexual assault and rape. If someone talked about what they may wear to an event, my mind would wander to – what was I wearing when an adult man decided to touch my child body? Was he attracted to my nightgown? That’s fucked up. Am I fucked up for even thinking about that? Am I broken? Grief. Disgust. Shame. More images and questions, all while the other person continued to talk about something I could no longer relate to. To say I was struggling socially would be an understatement.
While fearing the wedding and getting this bag onto the flight, I simulataenously worry that Evan is mad at me. I watch as he attempts to help me pack my bag. He’s calm but nervous. I’m scaring him, but this doesn’t stop me from ripping items out of my luggage and putting them on the floor. Every time I take something out, Evan grabs it and neatly folds it and put it back in my bag.
My breathing becomes more and more shallow. My mind and body feel like they don’t belong to me.
An airline employee approaches me, “Miss, do you need some help?” He looks at me like I am a wounded animal that could attack him at any moment.
I do just that, I attack. As his voice snaps me out of my tail spin, I scream at him, “I’m fine!” as tears stream down my face.
“You don’t have to be such a bitch. I was just trying to help.” The man stalks off, no longer compassionate to my apparent meltdown.
I cry harder. How does he not see I’m suffering? How does this man not know that this is about so much more than a bag?
I fully dissociate.
Suddenly, I’m watching myself. I am now a passenger to the chaos happening. I watch as my 27-year old self sobs, struggles to breathe, and hits herself. I am having an out of body experience. In this place, I become curious and feel no emotion. Why is she acting like this? Why are all the people boarding the flight looking at her like she is an animal at the zoo? Why is everyone expecting her to act logically when this moment is so illogical?
Evan grabs my hand. It pulls me back into my body. Slowly. Not all at once, but I can once again feel the overwhelming feelings in my body.
“Amanda, you need to breathe. I don’t know what to do.”
I slowly breathe. I stop pulling items out of my suitcase. I feel defeated. I realize I lost the battle and made a major scene while doing it. Shame floods through every cell of my body.
“Is she going to be okay to board? This flight needs to leave.” The indifferent airline employee has returned and she’s more upset about the flight being delayed than the woman having a mental breakdown in front of her. “You need to board this flight or leave the jet bridge now.”
Evan nods, “We’re coming right now.” He packs my bag as I sit in self-hatred. I don’t know what happened, it feels like something happened to me, but the reality is that I am the chaos that just blew through this jet bridge.
As Evan hands my bag to an airline employee I wonder, why is he with me? I’m so embarrassing, he could do so much better.
Evan grabs my hand and carries my backpack as well as his own. He walks me onto the flight and I feel like I am a small child rather than a full-grown adult woman.
