vignette

Six years ago tonight was another St. Patrick's Friday, and it was a fairly important one for me. The previous week had been spring break, and I opted to stay home and relax rather than trek up to New York with the Men's Chorus. It seemed to me things were going well; business as usual.

But on this particular Friday night, the confluence of several events created a Perfect Storm of sorts:

• My roommate had gone home for the weekend, so I was alone. I don't recall why, exactly, but I was surfing the web in my room rather than hanging out with my friends up on the third floor like I did most nights.
  
• It being both St. Patrick's Day and a Friday, there were plenty of drunken idiots running around outside, and a few more in the dorm hallways. Although in college I normally left my door open if I was in, this time I left it shut and locked, lest I be the victim of random annoyance, or whatever else might strike the fancy of the merry revelers (and we had some real prize jackasses living on our floor that year, so it wasn't a baseless fear).
  
• I wanted some fresh air, so I left the window open, but that meant I could hear not only the drunks outside, but also some odd, creepy ambient music.

Apparently, at one point, my mind decided it had had enough of this mental claustrophobia and gave my stomach the cue to go into spin cycle. I tried my best to keep it down, but had to run to the bathroom. Ta-da, there went dinner. I think afterward, I went up to the third floor to be with my friends and felt better, but I was annoyed that I was now hungry but didn't feel like eating anything.

(Really, I'm going somewhere with this, just hold on...)

The next morning, I ate breakfast just fine. I had a partial lunch at the mall food court, but still seemed okay. I managed to make it through dinner, but later that night... repeat. Now I was slightly more annoyed than the night before.

Sunday, similarly, was okay up until dinner time. I'm pretty sure I kept everything down that day, but didn't feel like eating much. I thought maybe after the weekend I would be fine, but Monday night proved me wrong. I was tired of not being able to eat full meals. I was clearly hungry yet didn't "feel" like eating. I was afraid that anything I ate was just going to come back up again, so why bother?

I called my parents. They weren't home, so I left a meandering stream-of-consciousness verge-of-tears message on the answering machine. I said I didn't know why this was happening, but all of a sudden I can't keep my dinners down, I don't feel like eating even though I'm hungry, and at some point I'm going to need some nutrients so what the hell should I do?? My mom called back and I rattled off a list of times in the past when I'd felt nauseous in stressful situations and tried to find the common thread, but couldn't.

My dad took that Tuesday off work and drove to Bowling Green to visit me and go with me to the campus clinic. You see, I had had what's called an anxiety attack, and my dad had been experiencing the same thing for several months. The doctor I saw gave me samples of Serzone and sent me to the university counselling center.

I managed to calm myself down as the week went on, and by the time I was on full-strength Serzone, I was feeling pretty good. In fact, I found I had much better concentration in class than I had ever had before. (It also seems that in the process of going a week without eating full meals, my stomach shrank, because I now felt like eating less on a regular basis. It would take a full year to get my weight back up to where it was pre-St. Patrick's Day.) I didn't find the counselling to be of much use, because we only had four sessions before the year was over, and most of the therapist's questions centered around the fact that I had never been on a date. That might be a stress for some people, but it wasn't for me; if I had ever had the desire to ask someone out, I would have.

The exact cause of my anxiety still puzzles me to this day. I can only guess that it was, much like that Friday night, an amalgamation of various stresses (see "NOOL," below). I eventually found ways to prevent nausea if I felt the slightest bit queasy or nervous, usually by humming a happy tune or thinking about something funny. I also think the Serzone kept me leveled enough to keep me from snowballing my anxiety.

I took Serzone through the rest of college, then my general practitioner asked if I wanted to wean off of it. I said yes, I'm tired of taking pills every day, and now that I don't have the stress of school, perhaps I won't need it (and I was already only taking a half dose anyway). I left the doctor's office knowing that I had to change something about myself, lest I fall back into the same anxious traps and end up taking meds again. I went home and wrote out my "New Outlook on Life." Two weeks later, I was done with Serzone. That day was August 21, 2002, and I call it "NOOL Remembrance Day," which I have written about before. Edited to add: I should also note that being involved in a local production of Forever Plaid was a big help, as it gave me a social life beyond college and led to most of the friends I have today.

There are times I wish I had done something differently that St. Patrick's night six years ago. If I felt lonely, why didn't I just go upstairs and be with my friends? If the ambient music creeped me out, why didn't I just play my own music in the room? But then I think about how much more relaxed I am now than I was back then, less uptight and less stressed. I can't help but thank that day for finally driving the point home that there was something about my way of thinking that needed to change... even if it meant I had to spend a year back down at my high school weight after I'd worked so hard to get it up. :)

I do think I'm a different--and better--person today because of that night. St. Patrick, I raise my Irish coffee to you.