Content warning: depersonalization/panic disorder
Every night, I go to bed thinking that I won’t wake up.
Eyes quivering under sealed eyelids … heart beating faster and faster as I drift into unconsciousness … legs squeezed, tight, tighter… jaw clenching … drifting off… I jolt awake. Gasping, sweating, fingernails digging into thighs, rivers of tears forming small pools on the comforter, screaming. I refuse to sleep. I refuse to let my body slip away from me. I refuse to lose control of what body I still have. I pray to God or whatever force (thing? being? energy? ) I have created Him to be. I beg Him to give me another day, to wake me up with His morning light. Just please, don’t let me die tonight. I’m not ready tonight.
My fear consumes me, but it’s shaded when the sun is out. Only at night does it become ruthlessly debilitating, slurping up what sanity remains. At night, I become unrecognizable– I cry at the smallest pain, I scream for the hospital at the tiniest ache– and I scare myself. Limb by limb, I lose feeling … nerve by nerve… until even a slap to the face won’t register. I am a ghost, gutted, gruesomely glitching. Nothing is left of my body but my panicked mind, and even that slips away as I fall asleep.
But I wasn’t like this a year ago. I had not yet known the power of fear.
Like millions of other adolescents, I tested positive for Covid-19 in November of 2020. I had never believed I could get sick; the doctor said most kids my age didn’t even have symptoms. Plus, I was overall healthy and somewhat athletic. Yet, in November 2020, I experienced a sickness so physically and mentally destructive that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t something else, something more serious. I felt my lungs collapse onto themselves, bridging the gap between my chest and my upper back, merging sternum with spine. Sensing a lack of oxygen in my blood, I constantly strained my throat to push more air into my body. And I was weak. I couldn’t eat or sleep or, some days, even step out of bed.
I went to the emergency room the day after testing positive. They gave me some medication, placed an inhaler in my shaking hand, and sent me home. I went back a week later. They gave me medication, another inhaler, and a doctor’s note diagnosing a severe panic attack and hyperventilation. But I didn’t believe them. After all, I had had panic attacks my whole life. That’s not what this was. My lungs had crumbled. I couldn’t breathe.
I went home two weeks later, glad to be over Covid and ready to move on. My chest still hurt but not as badly, and I was much more energetic. I went to bed that night tired but excited to see my friends the next day.
I drifted off slowly… happily… dreamily… and then I jolted awake.
My arm lost feeling and went limp. I could barely hold it up. I screamed loud and then louder when I realized that my other arm was also numb. My heart beat the fastest it had ever, racing to some kind of finish line. Suddenly, I was at my doorway, but my body was still in bed, screaming, swinging its paralyzed arms at its face. I watched myself heave and pant, yelling for my parents between sobs. I floated above my twisted corpse, drifting higher and higher. In the background, I heard my parents race in and grab me. I faintly heard my voice scream that I’m having a heart attack. To call 911. To not let me die. Please, Mom.
My soul floated further and further away from my body. Then everything went black.
In the course of the following five months, I experienced panic attack after panic attack, each worse than the last. I went to the emergency room on three more occasions during this time. And when I wasn’t in the emergency room, I thought that I should have been. I measured my pulse about every two minutes, just to convince myself that I was still alive. My hand was never not on my chest, searching desperately for a heartbeat.
Ever since that first night at home, the world around me seemed skewed, blurry, disproportionate. Staring at my hands, I couldn’t identify them as mine—they were too small. Life looked like a video game, one in which I was convinced I was trapped. It was like a constant acid trip from which I couldn’t wake up. Even my parents didn’t look like themselves. I thought that I may have died, and was simply stuck in some intermediate period between life and ultimate death. I spent my days outside of my body, watching it from an aerial view. Crippled with fear for my existence and an overwhelming desire to finally reach my inevitable destination, I didn’t leave bed. I slept with my mom every night. I made my brothers watch me while I napped, just in case I died in my sleep. Spending time with friends was almost impossible.
My doctors came to name my condition dissociation. My psychiatrist called it depersonalization/derealization disorder. My therapist liked to refer to it as acute anxiety and trauma. Whatever it was, it became unbearable, so much so that sometimes I vowed I would rather die than continue in my non-existence. What a terrible way to live, I thought. And there was no cure. I simply had to live with it—to learn to manage the panic that arose whenever I woke up in the morning and my legs didn’t look like mine.
After about six months, it waned, gradually. Some days were really bad. Others were better. I was able to do normal activities for a short amount of time before returning to bed. I started to meditate and do yoga as grounding exercises. I rejoiced on those mornings when I woke up and the room around me was clear, unobstructed. I felt demoralized on those nights when my body went numb. Even to this day, my chest remains tight and I often strain for air, but perhaps that’s simply become a habit. To this day, a year and a half later, I still sit in class and watch my classmates around me morph into miscellaneous shapes. I still check my pulse frequently and panic at the slightest abnormal heartbeat. There are still moments when I can’t leave bed out of fear for my body, for my existence, but those moments have become fewer and fewer. I’ve become more hopeful.
Now, every night, I go to bed fighting thoughts of death, but my fear of not waking up has subsided. I know that I will wake up in the morning… because I have, every morning. Covid-19 had become a monster that ate me up and spit me out in pieces, some that I still have yet to sew back together. But I know now that doing so is possible.
Every morning, I wake up and thank the God that I created for myself as a shield from the monster… my monster. I am grateful for yet another day.
By Sarah Flynn
