Confession

GOk, so since I can't sleep right now-feeling slightly symptomatic, blec-I decided to write about something that I've never talked to anyone about.

Not my dad, not my Spiritual Mom, no one.

It's something that happens the nights I find myself in the midst of an anxiety or panic attack.

During an attack, multiple things can happen, but there is a certain kind for me that trigger an illogical-and rather embarrassing-reaction.

The specific attack has to do with a certain few physical symptoms.

An ache between my shoulders, tightness in my chest, pain over and around where my heart is, sometimes accompanied by dizziness or a headache and nausea.

Whenever an attack like this sets in, it's usually for no particular reason, so of course my anxious mind immediatly has multiple ideas of what could be wrong and what could happen until I'm sure that at any moment I am going to pass out and have to be rushed to the hospital.

With this idea in mind, I begin to take inventory of what is in my purse and make sure everything I might need right away is inside.

Usually that list includes my water bottle, my phone and/or iPod and my charger.

My phone has my Bible, my notebook, reading, and is my contact to friends whom I would desperately need to talk to if I were in the hospital and scared witless.

It's an illogical method of calming myself down, but somehow..,just knowing that I have all of it together helps me to relax, however slightly.

Recently I've been trying to concentrate more on praying, singing, and reciting scripture than on packing a bag. But there is something about that feeling of just knowing in your bones that something is going to happen...and then having it be nothing.

The feeling of impending doom is one that cannot really be explained, no matter how much I wish I could.

Update: 10/17/14

Since I wrote this, I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually packed a bag. They've become so infrequent that I can't remember the last time I did. Until tonight.

It wasn't anything big, but I've been feeling sick for a couple hours. When j got home from work I slid my phone charger in my purse and have had it by me on the couch all night.

I don't understand this, the anxiety. It's becoming harder and harder to tell when I am actually sick, or when I am having an attack.