Supermarket(22)

“Why do you keep saying panic attack? What the hell is that?” I interrupted.

“Well,” the doctor explained, “a panic attack is an involuntary occurrence that happens in the mind. It’s—”

“Wait a second,” I said, cutting him off. “This wasn’t a mind thing, Doc. This was a physical thing. Like, this was my legs giving out, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see straight. This is a feels like I’m dying, life-threatening event here!”

The doctor looked at me for a moment, his hand placed over his mouth. Then he removed it and spoke. “The mind is a very powerful thing, Flynn. If you don’t control it, it will control you.”

I immediately remembered my conversation with Frank, regarding the attention I was giving Mia and not him. The thought of Frank increased the anxiety I was feeling. Frank always blathered on some Waking Life–type shit about the power of the mind to create and destroy. “What you believe to be completely physical is actually stemming from your mind. It’s a concentrated episode of acute anxiety that manifests itself physically. But it is not life-threatening. A panic attack cannot kill you. This is what you experienced,” the doctor continued. “I’ve got the test results to prove it.” He lifted up his clipboard, and pointed at it, as if that were proof. “Look, Flynn . . . just take a few days to yourself. Get your head right and see a doctor sometime. A therapist. It will be good to talk to somebody. In the meantime, I’m going to prescribe Ativan and a—”

“Oh, no no no, Doc,” I interrupted. “I don’t do pills.”

“Well, then you’ll have to white-knuckle through your anxiety, but I’m still suggesting you go to therapy. You can leave here whenever you feel ready.”

Then, just as quickly as he had arrived, the doctor was gone.

“What’s wrong?” Mia said to me. I knew it was the look on my face that gave me away. Like I was pondering something fierce.

“Honestly?” I said. “I just hope this doesn’t blow my shot at getting with you.”

“Getting with me?” Mia chuckled. “What are we, in seventh grade?” She moved over and sat next to me in the hospital bed. “You wanna get with me, Flynn?”

“Well,” I stumbled. “I mean, like . . .”

“Flynn, I’m here, aren’t I?” she interrupted. “If you want to get with me . . . then get with me.”

She put her hand on my leg, moving in for a kiss.

It was absolutely incredible—her lips were soft as silk. It felt electric. I held the back of her neck. I was suspended in the moment. The fact that she kissed me like it was no big deal? That let me know just how special she was. But even then, in the middle of our kiss, my mind raced. Thinking of where this could go, thinking that I was still not fully over Lola. That I wasn’t ready to move on. Thinking about how Mia had been there for me through this terrifying experience and then . . .

Well, in that very same moment, as my mind raced, as I was in the middle of kissing this beautiful woman . . . I thought about how spot-on the doctor was.

My mind truly was hyperattentive, and I needed to chill the fuck out. Writing this novel was messing with my head.

I mean, even in this moment, I wasn’t fully present. I couldn’t just enjoy something I had fantasized about for weeks.

As Mia pulled back from our kiss with a bite to my bottom lip, I looked into her eyes and had one final thought.

Maybe I should talk to somebody.





CHAPTER 7


DEREALIZATION


And that somebody was . . . Google.

Ted Daniels had no problem giving me a few days off to myself. Mental health days, if you will. Honestly, I thought he was going to be a bitch about it, but he was fairly understanding. In those days I thought a lot about, well, a lot. Essentially the only time I went outside was to walk Bennett. And the biggest thing on my mind, besides my novel? That feeling of not being in my body.

It’s hard to explain, but the next day when I woke up, I didn’t feel quite myself. My mind felt sharp, and yet at the same time it didn’t. It was the same reason I didn’t smoke pot, actually.

You see, when I smoked weed, I felt like there was a little person inside my brain watching me live. Did I really just pick up that glass of water and drink it? Did I really just scratch my arm? Did I really just awkwardly look at the person next to me? Did I really just say “Yeah,” while shaking my head no? What the fuck was I talking about? Who am I? What even is I? You know the kind of feeling, when you are questioning your own existence. When you know you are real but are not exactly convinced. When you feel barely tethered to reality? That’s the reason I didn’t smoke, and that’s the sensation I had been feeling all the time lately. Now I felt it when I was sober.

So as you can imagine, I was alarmed. I wanted to fix myself. I was so sure the doctor was wrong—this wasn’t anxiety. This was something else. This felt different.

I began constantly thinking. Thinking all the time. Worrying about the things I had never really thought about before, you know? Like death. Obviously, death is going to happen; it’s unavoidable. It is what it is. But then it hit me: YO! You’re gonna DIE! One day! It’ll be all OVER! And then I got scared because I didn’t know when I was going to die, and I began to wonder . . . if there was an invisible ticking clock above my head, would I want to know the number it was counting down to? Or how, or why . . . and it gets worse.