The Agony of Watching My Partner Suffer the Mother of All Panic Attacks

Sensory hyperarousal plus rage equals ...

Photo by Meghan Hessler on Unsplash

There's quite some commotion back here, I think. I crack the bedroom door and peer inside.

And there he is: flat on his back, on top of the covers, his hands folded over his chest. He looks like he's in his coffin, I think for a moment. Then the illusion is shattered by the roar of his snores. Aha! This is what I've been hearing. It sounds like someone playing a tuba full of lentil soup. Normally I find his snoring light, reassuring, comforting. Tonight, though, I stand in the doorway, nearly deafened.

She squeezes past me and leaps up onto the bed, the bell on her rose-patterned collar tinkling. She slurps his face, his beard. He doesn't react - just keeps sawing logs. She's confused. She licks his nose, his ear, then finally presses a paw into the softness of his belly. He exhales a pitiful, whining murmur and my brows knit: ouch! But this response satisfies her, and she paces in a circle twice before settling on his ankles.

He doesn't react. But he's alive. And he's calm.

I watch his face. I think he is beautiful - those chiseled cheeks and amber eyes. In this moment, though, it occurs to me for the first time that he looks his age.

Gently, I close the door again. I can't sleep back there.

From the couch in the living room, I discover there are two types of snores: one that sounds like the word "Himalaya," and another that's just a half note, delivered on a crisp, clear E-flat. Two rooms away, at 2:53 in the morning, I hear, "Himalaya. Himalaya. Himalaya! E-flat, E-flat, Himalaya." Barely registering that I'm doing it, I roll my eyes.

What does that mean? I wonder.

Despite the January chill, I move to the screened-in porch and flick my lighter against a cigarette. I hear they're going to quit making these things, this brand. Too bad, I think, exhaling into the dark.

It's so late. It's so late that it's early. But this is what happens now. We've both been up until three, four; until five or even five-thirty lately. I've always been a night owl, but this is different: I'm tired. Actually, I'm exhausted. I desperately want sleep, but it doesn't come. I dimly recall asking him yesterday if it was possible that we've both been somehow doing massive amounts of cocaine each day, without knowing it. But neither of us would ever do that.

What I would do, though, is take my nighttime dose of Zoloft along with Benadryl and a THC gummy to try to help myself along. This week, I subbed in Unisom for the gummy. Maybe I need all four.

Whatever my struggles, though, he's asleep now. That's because seven hours ago, his parents and I frenetically scrambled to absolutely flood his system with Thorazine and Xanax. He doesn't particularly like it when we do this. But we had to. We were trying to stop a horrific panic attack, the likes of which we haven't seen in months.

I'd like to have my system flooded with Thorazine and Xanax, I think resentfully.

~

It started with twitching, then moved on to vibrating. Hyperventilating. Complaining. Pacing in circles - for half an hour. Threatening to go jump off a bridge. Keening, then shuddering. Sobbing. And finally, screaming: about psychiatry, that evil, fake science. About all the people who have failed him. About high school. About the police officers who arrested and tortured him. Then it turned. He began to scream about the disputed number of suitcases he and his dad agreed to before a trip two Septembers ago. And about - the genocide in Ukraine? About America's history of slavery?

"Oh, just get over it, Dave! Oh, just move past it, Dave!" he spat. "Well, I can't get over it! Any of it!"

His parents and I just watched as he paced ever-faster laps around the coffee table, heaving loudly, clutching his chest and bending at the waist with each breath. I just gaped. In between labored breaths, he continued to scream indictments at all of us - things we had done wrong two days ago, last year, last month.

I sat, frozen, my back cramped as I literally braced myself against the onslaught.

At one point, his dad, a celebrated psychologist, whispered to assure me, "He's winding down." I noticed then: he had been filming the episode. Who could watch such a performance so calmly?!

I snapped out of my daze: "You're going to knock yourself out!" I cried out. How long can a person hyperventilate, I wondered, before -

"Good!" he snapped viciously.

But he didn't. Finally, someone got him to go onto the porch and smoke some weed to see if that helped. He'd been refusing this low-hanging fruit solution lately, saying it doesn't work anymore. But he was willing to try now. On the other side of the door, the three of us talked in low tones, until we heard a shouting sort of retch coming from outside.

"What's going on out here?" I asked, shutting the door behind me. Oh - he had thrown up. His mother materialized with a towel and then was back inside. "You're lucky we're here with your parents, because if it were just us, I'd be taking you to the ER."

No, he told me, through hot, angry tears. He won't go to any hospital. The crappy one out in California, where he was committed twice, has poisoned him against any and all hospitals.

Okaaay. "Well, then," I said, my voice even but stern. "You're going to have to find a way to let go of some of these things, because your life will be a wasteland until you do."

"Life is a wasteland!" he howled, bending down. "It's a horrible, tragic, evil -"

"It doesn't have to feel like that all the time."

"Sally!" he yelled. "Don't you see?! It does! This is what I've been trying to tell you, but you keep wanting to argue with me! Why do you think the most important poem of the 20th century is called The Waste Land?!" Tears ran down his cheeks as he begged me to understand.

I was still trying to put a name to the chill working its way up my spine when his mother opened the door, hissing that he was disturbing the peace and that someone was likely to call the cops.

Eventually, he calmed down a little. And then a little more. Around ten, he slurred, "I feel really fucked up," and I urged him to go lie down. I didn't really expect him to: just a few days ago, he'd informed me that he was now afraid of bedrooms. But now, so heavily medicated, he just replied, "Okay," in a toddler's sing-song, and stood up to go.

Jesus Christ.

I almost never let myself wonder this, but as I watched him trot obediently to bed, the question came unbidden: Is this what it means to be crazy?

~

And now, at 3:47 AM, as I put my cigarette out, I feel that chill up my back again. It's as if it's still here: the ghost, or the energy, of those glassy-eyed screams, those beseeching pleas to understand something I don't see the reality in at all.

I step inside. Now three rooms and a hallway away, I can still hear, "Himalaya. Himalaya. E-flat. Himalaya-a-a. E-flat ..."

The doctor thinks it's the Lexapro doing this: keying him up; giving him too much energy. He agrees. The plan is to slowly take him off it. I hope this helps, but I can't help feeling terrified: what if it's the Lexapro that's responsible for the productive time he has during the middle of most days now? Could he do without that?

Could I?

And if it does help him, will that, by itself, help me?

I putter through the kitchen. It's four in the morning now. I eat a couple of truffles from Harry & David. One is definitely cherry-flavored. The other one ... I'm not sure. Where's the little guide thing, I wonder, not making any move to locate it.

See, you have to understand. It's the way he holds my hand when we walk into a store. It's the way he pushes me to write. It’s the way he smiles at me. It's the way he makes coffee for me - always right when I'm craving another cup, even though I never say a word.

It's the way he loves our dog.

It's the way he loves me.

From the bedroom, I hear a low, long wail - the word, "Nooooo." Then a silence. And then, after a moment: Himalaya. Himalaya. E-flat.