Reverb10: Day 29

Day 29 – Defining Moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year. (Author: Kathryn Fitzmaurice)

I would say the moment that had effected me the most this last year was the 2 hour panic attack I had in my closet in June . I hadn't had a panic attack in 3 or 4 years. I used to have them on a daily basis and I had worked hard to change my life and change my thinking so that panic wasn't a part of my life.

Yet here I was, again, panicking in my closet (I always panic in my closet, it always seems the safest place to be when panicking). I had just spent that previous three weeks doing math for 8 hours a day (I was under a unreasonable time constraint to finish). It had been exhausting for sure, but what had gotten to me the most was my inability to do it. This went way beyond not being very good at math and missing some crucial early math education (thanks for that one shitty BC school system). It was almost like I stopped being able to learn at all. It was extremely frustrating. I could go over the same type of problem over and over and over again and not learn anything from one example to the next. I would make the same mistake again and again. I was totally blocked. There were several reasons for this blockage, most of which have since resolved themselves (more or less), but this blockage and panic deeply effected me for the rest of the year.

I didn't have any more panic attacks after that day. As usual with these types of things it scared me enough to make some immediate decisions and changes (I stopped doing math 8 hours a day for one). Yet it did make me disengage. I stopped participating in parts of my life. I spent most of the rest of the year feeling blocked, which really doesn't make you want to care very much about much of anything.

I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason, to be in line with paths we have chosen for ourselves. I am still not certain how this last year fits into who I am or where I am going, but I do know that I want to be more a part of this whole thing called life.