Old friend,
My family doesn’t travel much and for this I blame you. Granted we work during the summer, so vacations can be hard to schedule. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to the beach. Even so, one would think we make some time to “see the world” and “visit far-off places.” Strangely enough, we don’t. Why? Well you see, my family doesn’t travel much because my mother is afraid of flying.
Statistically speaking, flying is the safest way to travel. Very few accidents, highly automated support systems, etc. My mother, a woman of great intellect, can’t seem to hear these statistics. Again, I blame you. You are insidious, perfectly and quietly subversive. We like to picture ourselves as steady—our minds held fast by pillars. But the things we hold to aren’t as steady as we imagine; instead they are rocks, pushed farther and farther downstream by you, my dear friend.
The water analogy works well. Continuous, slow, unending—you eat away at anything so unfortunate as to cross your path. I find this irritating frankly, but I imagine asking nicely won’t help matters.
Sincerely,
Owen Gifford-Smith
Old friend,
I’ve been searching for more analogies to describe you. Not because anyone asked—why would they? We all have our demons to face—but because I was tired of hearing panic attacks compared to tiger attacks. Yes technically it’s an apt comparison but I happen to be rather fond of tigers and the analogy loses its charm when discussing strategies for fighting panic attacks.
“So is the running away from the tiger like breathing deeply?”
“No, that’s more like walking slowly around the tiger until it falls asleep.”
“What’s running then?”
“Avoidance? Or maybe pretending tigers don’t exist?”
You get the picture. Regardless, I was on a quest for a new metaphor, and I stumbled across the video game Celeste. I thought it was just a simple puzzle game where I piloted Madeline, our protagonist, as she climbed a mountain. The game developers kept surprising me though. Madeline was designed to have an anxiety disorder, and the game reflects her fears through the monsters I faced as the player. At one point an identical copy of Madeline stepped through a mirror and began to chase her. This reminded me of you.
The real genius of the developers didn’t hit me until about halfway through the game. Madeline is riding an old ski lift with a friend, Theo, she has met during her travels. While hundreds of feet in the air, the ski lift abruptly stops working. Theo tries to use the control lever and it snaps off. Terrifying right?
Madeline starts to have a panic attack and the game takes my control of her away. As she runs back and forth looking for a solution, the monsters I have been fighting all game begin to creep in around the edges of the screen. She starts to hyperventilate. They move in closer, reaching out with twisted red claws. Theo tries to calm Madeline down by telling her to picture a feather. “Your breaths keep the feather afloat,” he says. “Breathe in to make it rise, then gradually let it fall.”
For me, the player, a feather appears on the screen above the image of Madeline panicking. When I press “A,” the feather rises. When I let go, it falls. The objective is to keep the feather lined up with a box as it bounces slowly up and down. What’s so brilliant is that while I play this little mini-game, while I focus on it, the screen filled with monsters and demons and a broken ski-fit gradually fade out of view until all that remains is the feather. And me.
Rising up.
Rising down.
Slowly.
Old friend I was floored. I put the controller down, rocked back in my chair, and just stared at the screen. I have never, never seen such an accurate depiction. It’s an odd feeling, realizing I’m not the only one struggling. Do you think, Old friend, that it’s you who is really bothering me, or just the feeling that I alone have earned your attention?
Sincerely,
Owen Gifford-Smith
old friend,
I have decided to stop capitalizing the old in your name. Please take this as an insult because I’m quite upset with you. Today I was hoping to eat breakfast in peace, as I vainly hope every day, when you decided it was a good idea to show up. This was a bad idea, I assure you. There was no tiger. I am not on a broken ski lift. I don’t understand what is so threatening to you about an omelet. Are eggs a sign of my imminent demise? Does bacon suggest that I am about to be attacked?
Well, while you were busy making my throat close up and my hands shake, I was missing a fascinating discussion about the merits of different types of sandwich breads. I’m pretty sure white bread won out, but by that time you had decided to point out again and again just how disgusting the food I was eating was. How it was both too dry and too moist. How the stringy eggs dangled off of chewy, plastic blocks of ham. How upon contact with my saliva the food would bond to mucus and lodge itself in my throat like a dying animal, floundering about in mud while gravity sucks it down.
This was either before or after you asked me to hyperventilate. I cannot remember. Regardless, I leaned back in my chair and quietly pictured a feather. No one noticed, of course. I am a talented actor. Of all your demands, I find secrecy to be the strangest. Although perhaps I shouldn’t; I’m an easier target on my own.
Sincerely,
Owen Gifford-Smith
OLD FRIEND,
You are just too clever for this world! No really, please leave. How insidious you are! How long and careful your plans! The other day I was afraid to go on stage. Stage fright. Me. Afraid of going on stage. I have performed since I was ten! Never. Not once have I ever felt an inkling of fear. Not once. And yet there I was, pacing the wings with a racing heart and an incessant urge to hide. My legs shook until I thought I might collapse and the words stammered their way out my mouth.
Let me be clear. Theatre is mine.
Are there no walls you won’t climb? Are there no doors to keep you out? Will I sail across the world to an undiscovered island, build a house of fourteen locks, barricade myself within my room, only to turn and find you standing beside me?
Stage fright. Utterly ridiculous. What’s your next trick, shaking my hands until they can’t hold a pen?
Sincerely,
Owen Gifford-Smith
Old Friend,
I heard a theory the other day. Someone suggested that there are only two real emotions: love and fear. I would believe this except I think it doesn’t give you enough credit. You are more akin to heat. You exist, and love is the absence of you. This is far more believable, given what I know of your pervasiveness.
Maybe you are more than even that. If I were a fish in a pond, and someone reached their fingers in but refused to submerge their entire hand, I would think that five separate monsters were attacking me. After all, I can’t see the connecting palm, only the fingers. I glance over the hosts of fear, anxiety, terror, panic, and I must wonder: Am I facing five enemies? four? Or... none, perhaps.
Sincerely,
Owen Gifford-Smith
Owen,
People don’t understand anxiety. It’s not like normal fear. It’s also not the more clinical “inability to differentiate between that which is deadly and that which is not.” Anxiety is specific, personal. It’s me. Owen. Shortish brown hair, bright blue eyes, quick to tell a joke, rocketing up in bed at midnight digging nails into my chest as my heart pounds and my lungs gasp for the air I just can’t seem to get enough of. The sheets have been tossed about. Sweat drips down the back of my neck. My eyes, though wide open, cannot see more than vague shapes in the darkness.
But that’s a rather flashy way of putting it. Anxiety doesn’t just visit when a ski lift breaks. It’s also a river, gradually eating away at the supports of an old bridge. It’s choosing to be seen as rude rather than touch a door handle. It yells at you for your happiest moments and drapes itself over your shoulders at your worst. It is the four feet of soil between your coffin and the air above, the moment before a burn starts to hurt, the emptiness in a room after something terrible has happened.
And worst of all, it is you. I hear whispers in my own voice. I write letters to myself.
Sincerely,
Owen Gifford-Smith