Chapter 23 #2
“You don’t want to go to the doctor now?” Gray asks.
“I think you should go lie down for a bit,” Destiny says.
“I don’t think lying down and staring at my ceiling is going to help,” I say.
“I don’t think getting your heart rate up again is going to help either,” Destiny points out.
“I hate to say it, but I agree with the lady,” Gray says.
I deflate. I was hoping to just ignore this and continue on, pretending it never happened, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going to let me get away with that.
“Yeah, all right, I’ll figure out when the clinic opens and go then,” I say and leave Destiny and Gray at the gym.
I opt for a long walk instead of staring at my ceiling, and circle basically the whole resort before having a small breakfast and waiting for the clinic to open at eight.
I’m in and out in no less than an hour, and as I’m leaving the doctor’s office, I notice Destiny on a wicker egg chair in the lobby, scrolling on her phone.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Waiting for you.”
I rear back, surprised. Destiny and I are gym buddies, of course, but this puts us in friend territory. It feels nice to realize I have a real friend here.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“Half-hour or so,” she says.
“No yoga this morning?”
“No yoga. Just checking on my friend.” She offers me a kind smile, and I can’t help but return it.
I scan the lobby, certain that if Destiny is here, Gray is too.
“He’s getting a drink,” she says, understanding my sudden turn in attention.
“It’s like nine in the morning.”
She shrugs. “He’s on vacation, no?”
As if on cue, Gray strolls up with a Bloody Mary in hand, stirring the drink with a celery stick. He looks more relaxed than I think I’ve ever been a day in my life.
“’Ey, yo, what’d the doc say?”
I swallow hard, not because I’m nervous, but because saying it out loud for the first time like this is harder than I thought it would be.
“He, um, he thinks I have anxiety.”
“Oh shit,” Gray says, but in a neutral, non-judgmental kind of way.
“And what do you think about that?” Destiny asks, also without judgment.
I haven’t had much time to process it, so this is the first time I’m thinking about what Destiny is asking. The truth is, I’m not sure how I feel about it, except that I don’t think he’s wrong.
“I think it’s probably right. I told him that I had a panic attack this morning, he asked me what happened, and I told him everything.
He gave me a screening, like a questionnaire to fill out, and I was, like, the highest scores on all of them.
Based on all that, he said that it was likely that’s what was happening. ”
When Gray suggested that I might have had a panic attack this morning, I didn’t think there was any way he could be right, but after reading through some forums on the internet about other people’s experiences with panic attacks, I realized that maybe he was right.
That rabbit hole led me down another one on anxiety, and between what I read on my phone while I waited for the doctor and my conversation with him, an anxiety diagnosis doesn’t feel foreign at all.
In fact, I feel a bit relieved. I finally have a word for something I’ve been feeling for a few years and could never really put a finger on.
“Cool, you want to get something to eat?” Gray asks.
His nonchalance throws me off guard. I wasn’t expecting him to freak out, but I also wasn’t expecting this.
“I, uh, think I might go for a run, since I didn’t finish my workout this morning.”
“Do you want company?” Destiny offers.
“I don’t think so, but gym tomorrow?”
She gives me a nod of confirmation and then, for the first time ever, hugs me. For a second, I forget what to do with my arms, but end up hugging her back, grateful for the moment of connection.
“You’re going to be okay,” she says, quiet enough for just me to hear.
Her kindness this morning has left me reeling a bit.
Not because she hasn’t always been a kind person, but because our relationship is usually teasing banter and veiled insults to push the other person while lifting weights.
Somewhere amidst all of that, I guess we really became friends.
Moments like this are often when people show their true colors, and Destiny’s colors are obviously the good ones.
Before leaving, she gives my arm an affectionate slap and promises to whoop my ass tomorrow morning.
“What are you going to do?” I turn to Gray. His Bloody Mary is half gone and he’s got a tomato juice mustache on his upper lip. I’m glad to see that he’s taking to his time off. He deserves it.
“Sit by the pool. Not think about work.”
“Good luck with that. I’ll join you after my run. Put some sunscreen on, yeah?”
“There he is,” Gray says with a smirk as I leave him to head to the beach.
A run is always going to clear my head, and I’ve got about a million thoughts to sort through. Namely about what happened last night in light of this new information.
My feet carry me through the resort and onto the firm part of the sand.
The sun is already making the day too hot, and I’m sweating before I’ve really even gotten started.
The sand gives under my feet with each step.
Eventually the rhythmic pounding of my own feet takes me to the meditative place where my thoughts don’t circle.
They feel more manageable in this state, with my heart rate up while moving my body.
I have no headphones, so the only sounds are my labored breathing, my feet pounding on the sand, and the crash of the waves.
My view is of untouched beach, the occasional person on a walk or hunting for shells, a forest of palm trees, and the water lapping the shore.
I was never really a beach guy before coming to Mexico, but this is undeniably soothing.
It doesn’t take long for me to start to feel like myself again. I’ve been shaky since leaving the gym this morning, but with every step, I feel steadier, stronger. More like myself.
The doctor said that anxiety will likely never go away fully, but that there are tools out there to help me live and cope with it, like therapy and medication.
I know running isn’t therapy—therapy is therapy—but there is something healing about all of this, and not just because I’m running in a beautiful place.
My thoughts and all the feelings knotted up inside me start to untangle.
If the name for what happened at the gym today is panic attack, then I think what happened last night during my conversation with Abby is a pre-panic attack. Or a mini panic attack. It felt so similar: the way my chest tightened, the way the world started feeling off, how sweaty and shaky I was.
I was so scared to lose her, and the conversation just kept slipping away from me. I was losing control and all I could hear were my own thoughts. I couldn’t hear what she was really asking for. The anxiety was so loud.
Back in my room after the fight, I thought I had been an asshole, but maybe I was just on the verge of a panic attack. I guess both of those things could be true, but I still wish I’d known this about myself so that last night could have gone differently.
Because now that I’m not overwhelmed with the fear of losing her—because I already lost her—I can clearly see that what she was asking for was reasonable. More than reasonable. It was way more logical than what I wanted.
Of course Abby’s voice matters to me, and I hate myself for ever making her feel otherwise. I cringe thinking about how she begged me to hear her. I can’t change the past now, but I do need to figure out how to manage going forward.
If I want a chance with Abby, a real one, I can’t let what happened the other night happen again.
Maybe I’m not broken, or maybe I am. Either way, I’m going to fix what I fucked up.