Attack

Warning: this story contains VOMIT and may GIE YOU THE BOKE.

Today is Monday. Not last saturday, but the one before, nine days ago, a Thing happened. It was the largest of a series of similar Things that also happened over the few evenings preceding it. These Things were very stressful events that I couldn't avoid, didn't plan for, didn't really deserve, but can't really blame anyone for. This thing lasted until 4am. Exhausted, I went to bed. This is typical following a Thing of this type and magnitude, both for myself and most of the people I know.

The next night, Sunday, I woke up extremely late. This is also typical of a Thing for me, I think it's something to do with how wrecked your brain feels afterwards or maybe how sad it makes me feel. I had a deadline on Monday morning, but I'd done enough work already, and I knew that I could get everything in with plenty of time, provided that nothing went wrhgnrngnng.

Hgngnrnwnrng?

...

Hngngnnfnfwnn!!

A few hours after starting, I realised that I had a very uncomfortable pressure that felt like it was in my abdomen and also somehow in my lower back, like my stomach was pressing into my kidneys. It quickly got worse. When I was seated, I wanted to stand because my back was too uncomfortable. When I was standing, I wanted to lie down because my back still didn't feel any better. When I lay down on my side, my stomach felt pretty dodgy, like it was too heavy and not well supported in my body and poking into me wrong inside. When I lay on my back, my stomach felt compressed and my abdominals taught. I kept alternating between these four states and it made writing impossible.

All the while I felt that my stomach was full of food. Bear in mind that I had barely risen from bed. I also hadn't really eaten much that day. I wasn't in agony, because a sharp pain in your abdomen is exactly the sort of thing I'd rather let an A&E doctor worry about and maybe score some tramadol into the bargain. But it was a sort of agonising uncomfortableness, like being so restless that you hope your skin sloughs off. I wanted to be held aloft in a bubble and gently rotated. I wanted it to be over.

This happened to me before. A few months ago, I spent a four day weekend like that and finally threw up about 800 gallons of horrible, unspeakable things. Way more food than I could eat in a day, all diligently digested and ready to make its merry way into other parts of my digestive system. Brown liquid that, you know, was horrible. The Dr couldn't work out what was wrong with me, but I got tested for the h. pylori bacteria and it came back negative. I don't have those. So that's... good?

So when this latest attack hit, I tried so hard to remember what it had been like before, and how I had dealt with it, because it had been debilatating and strange and exhausting. The attack was just too maddeningly distracting for the memories to click into place, though. I couldn't even focus on which room I wanted to be heading to, I just had to keep pacing and sitting and lying down and tossing and turning all around the house. This was very late at night by now.

After about twenty minutes or an hour or two or something, I started to think rationally: this work needs to be in tomorrow. This is my first paid gig in a while and I can't afford to come off like I can't handle it. I thought, okay, my stomach is full, so I should make myself throw up. I tried that, and it didn't work. I put my finger into my throat and my gag reflex went off and no vomiting happened. I tried again. I got quite comfortable putting my finger there because my brain was tuning it out.

Then I took two paracetamol for the pain and went upstairs. I tried to force myself to sit still and work on the article. I ended up nervously swinging in the chair and tapping my feet and rocking back and forth like a fucking nutcase, and then I started to notice that I wasn't breathing at all. That was scary. It's the first time I've had that happen to me. So I went downstairs and did something that it takes courage for a man in his mid 20s to do.

I woke up my mum.

She said she'd be through in a minute or two, so I went to wait for her in the kitchen. Then I felt my mouth filling with saliva. I ran to the toilet and threw up, and lo and behold - about 800 gallons, mostly water, very well brewed. The last time this happened, months ago, I had thrown up once and that had been it - all better. Ahhhhhh how relaxing, time to get back to work, sorry for getting you up mum, hold on I'll just maybe pop in oh fuck get OUT OFTH HWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

So much hwork. Again. Then for a few hours I paced around the kitchen talking to mum, sitting, lying on the couch, standing up, pacing in a semicircle from the foot of the stairs to the pantry. We talked about how I felt and what I needed to do before I could rest. She talked about letting me dictate the article to her, which we ended up doing in the end - but that was later. At the time, I felt myself pushing at the idea. No, it, uhm, no, I just, no, I feel like, I think that, It's just that like, that, uhm- then I ran to the bathroom for more HWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I felt like I couldn't function, I was too preoccupied with my symptoms to talk about how this article was getting done. It was like the worst mushroom trip ever. I asked her, you know, what would they do for me in a hospital right now? I was thinking, how the fuck can this not be an emergency? I can't function as a human being! I'm moving all the time and I don't even know why! I asked her, and she said, if you were in a hospital right now, you probably wouldn't feel like this, because you'd be suspended from the pressures of your life and in a secure place where they'd bring you food and people would visit you with cards and things.

I wasn't getting it. That wasn't what I wanted to hear. I wanted to know why my kidneys were sore and how the NHS would position someone in a bed who couldn't lie down, like me, because there was no comfortable position for my unwieldy limbs and organs on any cushioned arrangement of planks in the entire house. I asked, what is causing me to keep having to move around? What would be doing that?

She said that I've always done that when I was stressed. Then I noticed that I was breathing really fast and my heart was beating and, fuck, I WAS pacing around because I've always done that when I didn't know what the fuck to do. Fuck! I'm doing this to my fucking SELF! I started asking her, "I'm having some sort of stress thing aren't I?" but I didn't make it, I started crying. She said that she thought I was having an anxiety attack.

The epilogue to this story is that, with the help of my mum and my editor and some of my friends I was able to do the work and get it in and not have, you know, an exploding heart. A few minutes after it had clicked that my symptoms were related to anxiety, I stopped pacing and sat down and tried to be calm instead. It was really hard, but it worked a little bit. I kept throwing up every few hours, pretty much until the article was in, and every now and again I had to remind myself to breathe properly (or at all), but I got through it.

Now it's more than one week later. My abdomen still hurts from the vomiting, and I still get bloated feeling, and it hasn't really went away, but I have an appointment with a doctor and I'm trying to keep relaxed and calm.

I would just like to say that I had no fucking idea that this could happen, and it totally can. Please take care of yourselves and try to chill out now and again.