Panic

“That's the thing about pain,’ Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. ‘It demands to be felt." --John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

The day after it tried to kill me, the doctor says “your heart sounds fine.” Apparently this has only been a test of my emergency broadcast system. In the event of an actual emergency my heart will let me know in a more dramatic fashion. My heart isn't shy, it doesn't murmur like other hearts, instead it shouts from my own throat just to make itself heard. I should be used to hearing my heart speak; in high school the nurse said I need reinforce the bars in my chest with iron supplements because anything that sounded that wild should not be let out. In the corners of my notebooks I doodled hearts like mine clenched by thorns and spouting flames: sacred hearts. 

The divine mystery of the sacred heart held for me a fearful plausibility. I understood the feeling of a heart so full of love and sorrow that it could no longer be contained that it must be allowed to combust in a brilliant display of color before it could be placed safely back. They say the meek have more panic attacks because passivity in life may lead to the sudden combustion of feeling.

Once in a box of baby things, the relics of our past, my brother and I found a shiny red plastic heart with a switch on it. When we turned it on it beat like a metronome. It was thought, my mother explained, to prevent SIDS by reminding a baby’s heart to keep rhythm; a night time conductor for the newborn percussionist. My heart never learned to keep any one rhythm for long.

My loss of rhythm is often the first sign of an impending assault from panic. No one is sure what causes panic attacks but only a little over 2% of the population suffers them. We may be mis-wired, our bodies triggering the alarm bells for a personal apocalypse prematurely. Chest pain, tingling, depersonalization, headache and trouble breathing are written in the body’s book of revelations, they are almost always signs of the end times in the rest of the population. For me it means about twenty minutes of terror in which my body acts as if it is in peril. My rational brain knows I am fine but when has the rational brain ever won an argument against the body?

I know fear is a spark. Fear will cause my sacred heart to burst again. I am fearful because I need a room in a strange city and I can only find two bedroom apartments. I’m fearful the other bedroom like the hollow chamber of my heart will remain empty. I can’t afford maintain a two bedroom apartment for more than a couple months on my own. I understand people find roommates everyday. I understand it’s not unusual to move alone. I just never thought I would move alone again. 

Kalamazoo’s late summer evening sometimes feel like home. As fireflies ignite in impassioned bursts along the bike trail lighting my way home. I sit on my balcony in a second hand plastic outdoor chair ponderously sipping cheap wine. Fireflies, sunsets and wine are the worst kind of lies. Kalamazoo isn't home either. Like Marquette wasn't home. Like Sylvan Lake wasn't home. Like Rochester Hills wasn't home. 

I've stopped thinking of home as a place or even a state of being. In it’s new incarnation home is a person. Home is the person whose eyes I will look at and say “It’s a good offer but we have to move.” She'll say “We should take it.” Home is the firmness behind ‘we’. Home isn't waking up to the same bedroom year after year but waking up on the same side of the bed; that little amount of space that does not need to be renegotiated. Home doesn't need to know where the grocery store is but it gets lost together and laughs as they pass the same gas station the third time. Home fills the empty chamber.