This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,90

I didn’t feel like I was going to die, or anything.”

Listening to myself, I think: That’s a pretty low bar.

Dr. Rifkin seems to agree, his forehead creased in concern. “Did you feel like you needed any medical attention?”

“No, not really. It was exactly the same symptoms I had before, and it went away within five minutes.” My doctors always reinforced to me that panic attacks are almost never dangerous, no matter how frightening they feel.

“That’s fabulous, Will. You’ve done an incredible job working on a lot of exercises and techniques to help you in this situation. I know that you know that, if this becomes recurrent, or if you have any new symptoms that you can’t explain, you should call me or go to the ER…”

I’m nodding before he even finishes his sentence, because I’ve been to this rodeo before. The next thing he’s going to do is offer pills.

“… and you know that if you ever get to the point where you don’t feel like you can control your physical reactions,” Dr. Rifkin says, right on schedule, “there are medications that might help to decrease the frequency of these attacks.”

I nod, because God, I’ve wanted those meds before. There was a point in middle school when I could barely go a week without getting another panic attack, when I wanted nothing more than a pill I could take to make me able to step on a school bus without fear of hyperventilation.

My mother had been frank about her opinion. “Those drugs, William, they can be good, but they can also be very, very bad.” She ticked off their evils on her fingers. “They can give you headaches, they can disturb sleep patterns, they can make you wish to harm yourself. Some of them can make you an addict.” She didn’t expressly forbid me to take them, though she warned me, completely unnecessarily: “You know that if you are thinking about taking drugs, you should not mention it to your nne nne or to your cousins, right? It’s better to keep these things private.”

In the end, I’d held off on the meds, and to this day I’m not sure if it was out of pride or because of my mother’s warning.

“Thanks, Dr. Rifkin. I’m good for now.”

He gives his usual nonjudgmental nod. “All right. Were there any triggers that you can think of for this most recent incident?”

The AC in Dr. Rifkin’s office is on full blast, and it’s nice when you first walk in from the August heat, but it creeps into a chill the longer I’m here. I look down at where I’ve tucked my hands in between my legs to keep them warm, and stretch my shoulders, preparing for the heavy lifting about to begin.

“I told you about my summer job at my last appointment, right?” He nods again. “Well, there’s this girl.…”

This Is My Brain, Powerless

JOCELYN

When I wake up to the pounding at my door, I look over at my alarm clock, see that it’s four thirty, and almost go back to sleep. Then I see the little red dot lit up by the PM, and I realize it’s my dad hollering something about how I need to come down now because Will had to leave for a doctor’s appointment.

“All right, all right, I’m coming,” I yell, not budging from my bed. Five minutes later the knocking starts again, and I can tell by the knock (softer, but regular like a metronome) that it’s my mom, whose knocking is not to be denied. When I open the door, my mom looks me up and down, expressionless, before she motions to our bathroom. “Kuai yidian, shu tou, xi lian.”

I look in the mirror, and I’m a living, breathing “Hangover” trope. My hair is a rat’s nest, and the makeup I had put on is a ruddy, streaky mess from my post-interview cry. I’d made it up to my room feeling a calm numbness. I’d told myself that I was okay, that I wasn’t going to freak out until the decision e-mails were sent out, and then my phone had buzzed, and it was Will, and he asked me if I was okay, and I realized with an ugly flash that, no, I was not okay.

And I’m still not.

After Will’s text message I cried myself to sleep, wallowing in a freaking tsunami of disappointment and self-loathing. Now that I’m awake, as I survey the wreckage, I have no idea how to rebuild. I have no idea what to