What Happens When You Can't Afford a Panic Attack?

Unexplained trips, secret phone calls from secret phones, sobs and panic attacks, finding out who your real friends are, all stuff I can relate to. So recently, when I finished reading Awake by Jen Hatmaker, a lot of these moments in the book hit me hard, bringing back a lot of bad memories. It's mostly about her journey through divorce and betrayal, including a religious and spiritual crisis, because she and her husband were both pastors and church leaders. The thing I appreciated about it was the woman's perspective on all of that trauma and recovery, but the further I got into it, the more I realized that those of us who go through these family crises live in very different worlds, depending on what class we come from.

For a lot of the book, I was right there with her. I could relate to the pain of losing a marriage, especially after so many years, the betrayal, the self-blame and loneliness. My kids were much younger than hers were when we went through it, so I had both of mine to guide through that process, even while I was going through it. Still, I see her sharing what it meant to have older kids, grownups even, who dreamed of engagement parties and weddings and babies who have married grandparents who still get along, and I get that too. I've seen some of that in my kids as they got older, the way they had to adjust some of their hopes and dreams, how first birthday parties can get a little weird, and I'm glad she's talking about it.

But then she gets to the part where she drops off her daughter, the only one still living at home, at a month long summer camp, and I start losing the thread. After that, she decides she's going to take a "Me Summer Camp," just relax in an old monastery-turned-resort for a month, really focus on quiet and meditation and journaling and get herself together. After all, she'd been through panic attacks and lost friendships, a whole career down the tubes and a real doubt whether she can ever enjoy church again.

That's where she lost me.

When I was going through it, like a lot of us, there was no question about taking off a month to meditate or relax or have adventures that might heal my broken heart. I had to work. Bills had to get paid, and a month of not working meant a month of no income. I was a teacher, so I had summers off, thank God, but I was also a single parent, which meant that I put the kids in day camp and worked a second job to be able to stay afloat and even take the kids on vacation a couple of times for the year. Divorce and recovery are very different for those of us who don't have the kind of money that allows for month-long sabbaticals, or even longer, considering that I still don't know what kind of steady work she was doing during those years.

And while I loved the passages about her friends rallying around her ("Girl, pack your bag, we're going to Mexico), that wasn't my experience. When you're not rich, most of your friends tend to be not rich also. I had friends and family who were there for me, supporting me, for sure, but not "take a week off and book flights to Cancun" type of support. I have friends who bring by dinner and call to see if I need them to make a playdate for the kids. She has friends who are world-renowned therapist celebrities or wealthy lawyers who ask if she wants to relax in their apartment in New York City for a few weeks, since they're not using it for a few months.

So how do the rest of us, the ones who have to work every day and take care of kids while we go through trauma, how do we deal with panic attacks and nervous breakdowns? It's simple! We just schedule them on our lunch breaks or after the kids' bedtime. We just do our jobs, with minimal dips in quality, so we don't get fired on top of everything else. We get in front of colleagues and students and clients and use every single bit of our emotional and mental energy to perform at an acceptable level, and then when the bell rings or the whistle blows, we go to a quiet little spot and fall apart, but only for forty minutes, because we have to be back on the floor for the second half of the day.

Or maybe we just forego the panic attacks altogether. Who needs them, amirite? Instead, we just live on the razor edge of sanity and deny ourselves the release that a panic attack would provide. We watch our hair thin and gray, watch ourselves get fat or skinny, shave years off our life expectancy and keep it pushing.

I was fortunate enough to get therapy during the worst of those times, and it was a lifesaver. It cost about as much as a week of groceries at that time, but it was one of the few things keeping me on track and moving towards healing. The day I got a health insurance plan that included therapy and counseling sessions for copays, I started going on the regular, like it was my AMC A-List account and I'm watching some Paw Patrol movie just because I have one more free movie this week and I'm not trying to waste my money. I don't even have anything to talk about, but I'm on the couch and the therapist is like, "didn't we put a lid on this four months ago?"

By the way, check if your insurance plan covers therapy and family counseling.

And when I say I was fortunate to get therapy, I really mean that I understand how fortunate I was. Not everybody has access to mental health care, even though everybody should. Maybe the difference between people who can afford therapy and people who can't is as big as the difference between people who can afford therapy and people who can afford month-long spiritual retreats in convents. 

I think that's the perspective I wanted from this book. It could just be my general saltiness, but it seemed as if the book just normalized all these resources and reactions that seemed so extravagant to me. The way she wrote about the time off and the relaxing or distracting trips, the house with room for everyone and the world-renowned therapists on speed dial, just struck me as out of touch. I remember what it was like going through the trauma, and I hope she's continuing to heal from it. I also hope that nobody reads that book who's also going through it, who probably can't afford the luxuries she can, and decides that healing is unattainable for them.

No Kings

It's been a while since I posted. Too many things going on all at once. For me, it's work, writing, finishing an MFA degree, plus all the regular demands of family and health. But in a larger sense, there's more going on all around us than I can remember for a long time, with corruption and vulgar insult propaganda on official government social media, masked agents disappearing people in ICE raids, and political pundits like Megyn Kelly arguing that sexual assault on children isn't so bad if they're fifteen. On top of that, the high prices of basic needs and growing economic crisis has a lot of us busy just trying to make ends meet. 

Like a lot of us, I want to do something about all this, but I barely have time or energy to maintain the life I had even a couple of years ago. When the No Kings protests happened back in June, I didn't participate, I guess because things were still just barely good enough then that I didn't feel so strongly convicted. But after I saw how powerful they were as a way of speaking up and showing up, I wished I had gone. 

When the organization planned another day of protest, I made sure I showed up. 

About a week before the October No Kings events, I told my wife I wanted to go, and she was already a few steps ahead of me. She jumped on board - "just pick a place" she said. We also took our girls with us, six and twelve. The prospect of bringing the kids made me nervous, because of all the images I've seen of police at BLM protests and of ICE at other gatherings of people. I almost told everyone to stay home and just go by myself, to check it out. But our faith prevailed and we decided to all go, just keep our head on a swivel, watch for exit strategies, and keep the kids close if we had to move quick.

But it wasn't like that at all. You've probably seen all the images and video - people in inflatables and costumes mocking the regime, musicians playing in the crowd, kids and families out like it's a block party. In a lot of ways, it was. That was certainly the vibe where I was, a celebration of freedom and a rejection of oppression and corruption. At the end, we were really glad we took the kids, because it gave us an opportunity to expose them to these issues and talk to them about why we care, why we're concerned about our neighbors and what's happening to them. An older man gave our youngest a little American flag for her to wave while everyone sang and chanted and honked their car horns around us.

And I understand that this vibe is part of the reason that some people are calling these No Kings and other events rallies instead of protests. They say that true protest is about putting your body and wealth in the path of injustice and taking risks to interrupt and oppose the system, not about dressing up like a frog and dancing in the streets. They say that a gathering that shouts and sings but doesn't break any unjust laws or disrupt the regime is just a party with a #justice theme. 

And they're right, absolutely right.

The last time I participated in protest was back in college. I started my undergrad in 1991, the year the LA unrest broke out, following the acquittal of Rodney King's attackers. It was a wild spring semester in Miami, particularly for this college freshman, and that's saying something, considering what we went through in the 80s. We had protests around the city and on campuses, some of which I attended, partly out of curiosity, partly solidarity, but also partly because I was already there. It didn't really require that much of me - a missed class maybe, some time out in the April and May sun. I didn't have anyone to take care of, nobody really to answer to except myself, and too broke to have anything to lose.

This time around, though, I'm older and more responsible. It's a vague word, responsible, because it can either mean you did something bad or you're supposed to do something good. I hear the critics who are saying that these events are just rallies, or maybe even just parties with a specific playlist and an odd fashion sense. I know there's more I can be doing, and I'm trying to find my way in all of it.

But I have to think about my kids. I'm scared about what can happen to them at an event where maybe the shouts aren't as funny. My wife is Black and my kids are mixed. I'm very aware that there are places we could go and trouble we can get into that would be a lot easier for me to navigate than for them. I have to think about the situations I put them into. I'm not that eighteen-year-old on the quad anymore, sucked into the energy of a crowd, sharing their anger and risking some good trouble to do something about it.

And yet, I'm also scared for what will happen to my kids if we don't stand up against all this violence, racism, and corruption. What kind of country will they live in, if they can even live here? 

One thing I know I can do is write. I can use my words to speak up, on this channel and through my stories and novels. I can create whole worlds, and use them to challenge the culture that's threatening my family and my neighbors. I can pray, and my faith shows me churches that haven't always been on the right side of history, but also churches that have fought against oppression and moved the culture towards justice. Recently, I read Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez' book Being a Sanctuary. In the book, she writes about "suffering intimately" with the people around me. I can't ask my kids to lay down in traffic, but I can take them with me to carry food to a neighbor who's short this month because some power-grabbing people in the government are holding their SNAP benefits hostage to punish their political opponents and hide their unsavory connections and wickedness. I can call up the people in my own community who are worried about getting swept up in ICE raids, and let my kids come when I check to see what they need. I can explain to them why we don't go to Target or other stores they used to like.

So I may not be able to do everything, but I'm looking for the ways I can protest, using my art, faith, money, and love. And if there's another No Kings event near us, protest, rally, or whatever, I'll be there. I'll bring the kids so they can at least know where we stand as a family, and see the diversity of people in our community who stand on those same principles. I might even put on my Spider-Man suit and dance with the clowns and unicorns.