When I dropped off of the Internet, it wasn't meant to be a years long sabbatical. I thought I just needed a break; that I was getting burned out from writing Basement Songs and movie reviews for Popdose.com. Something cracked, though, and I couldn't consider writing even in a journal for a very long time.
Things changed in the winter of 2017. While driving to pick up Jacob at theater rehearsal, I experienced my first panic attack. It started immediately after he got in the car at the theater and it slowly took over my body for the fifteen minute drive home. My skin became clammy and I felt myself removed from my body. My brain was empty and I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I gutted it out until we walked through the front door. Without saying a word, I went upstairs, crawled into bed and got in the fetal position. I just wanted to close my eyes and shut out the world.
The next morning I awoke exhausted, as if I'd exercised the previous day. That was the first time I understood that panic attacks are as much a physical experience as they are mental.
I went through my regular day and thought it was just one of those things that happened. I didn't even know if I called it a panic attack the first time. But I knew that something was off. The first true indication that I had to remove myself from the Internet was when I went to write my next Popdose piece. As I tried to write, my fingers became dead weight and I could feel that same panicky sensation brewing. That's when I chose to stop writing.
As painful as it was to just quit, something I never would have considered because I was raised not to be a quitter, it was such a relief, too. To not worry if anyone was reading my posts (most peiple weren't) and to not compare my ratings to those of my fellow writers took such a load off of my shoulders. I'm sure many of you know that feeling, the feeling that not enough folks have liked you posts on Facebook or Instagram. It's a vicious thing getting sucked into that cycle. Vicious.
I thought that was the end, that ditching writing for Popdose would cure me. It didn't. It wasn't just writing on the Internet that froze me; I quickly found out that when I tried to work on a screenplay the same feelings crept in. Faced with the idea of not writing a screenplay, a new fear overtook me: if I wasn't going to be a screenwriter, what the hell was I doing with my life?
Petrified that my life journey of being a writer was now something I couldn't do anymore, I bottled up even more.
MARATHON FOOTNOTES (for those who didn't think I would really footnote a stream of consciousness thought): Footnote #1 Academy Award Winning Best Picture Films from 1969 to the Present: Midnight Cowboy, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather II, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Dances With Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Footnote #2 Members of the band YES, from 1969 to the present: In 1969, Yes is formed with Jon Anderson on vocals Peter Banks on guitar, Bill Bruford on drums, Tony Kaye on keyboards and Chris Squire playing bass. This group records
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