Unpublished; written in 2024.

It doesn’t happen with a bang. Not like the movies. I’m not stabbed, or attacked, or am otherwise the victim of some traumatic event.

It happens like this:

Nausea in my throat; I choke. My stomach is twisted up and wrung dry, like a filthy rag. The tin walls of the tram push in: closer closer closer. Something deep within me swells; a primal, desperate fear—

It happens. In an hour; over three years; over a lifetime. It happens slowly. It happens all at once.

There are 5.3 million posts under the hashtag ‘#anxiety’ on TikTok. It doesn’t take much scrolling to find videos like:

5 signs your brain and body is addicted to stress

4 Signs YOU Did NOT Know You Have “High Functioning Anxiety”

6 Magic Words That Stop Anxiety

This phrase is repeated 365 times in the Bible … Do Not Be Afraid

Some are by well-meaning creators who genuinely suffer from anxiety, trying to convey what it’s like. Some are ignorant at best and predatory at worst (a big thank you to our sponsor, BetterHelp!). In comment sections, people holler and commiserate: ‘maybe I have anxiety’, ‘HOW IS THIS EXACTLY ME’, ‘Bro do you have cameras in my house’.

I get it. It’s nice to not feel alone. It’s nice to put a label to our feelings and struggles.

But for me, it’s as if the word ‘anxiety’ has lost all meaning. It can mean anything from ‘you’re a high achiever, but you OVERTHINK’ to ‘you’re lying in the ED convinced you’re dying’. The ‘glamorous’ parts of anxiety gain the most traction on TikTok: the random shivers, the asking for reassurance, the nervousness when talking to strangers. It’s quirky. It’s kind of cute. It doesn’t inconvenience anyone. It’s the parts everyone can relate to.

It’s not—

—rapping on the scratched plastic pane with a shaking fist. ‘Please,’ I say, because even when I’m dying I’m polite. ‘I need to get out.’

The tram driver keeps his eyes on the road. ‘Can’t let you out here.’

I’ll die. I know I’ll die if I don’t get off. I feel it in my bones, in the bile at the back of my throat, in the way my heart slams against my ribcage. I’m about to pass out. I’m having a heart attack. I—

Because that’s when the anxiety becomes a disorder. When I can’t leave home because I’m terrified of what’s outside. When I wake up so paralysed with fear I can’t get out of bed. When I’m so constantly in fight-or-flight mode it’d be a mercy to be dead and unfeeling—

No no, dear. No one wants to hear about that.

Shaking hands—

Sitting in a toilet stall breathing piss-stenched air—

Curled up on the ground in front of Flinders Street station, Myki officers asking if I need an ambulance—

When I am nineteen, I’m referred to a cardiologist.

Heart conditions run in my family. I have an aunt with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, where the heart beats abnormally fast due to an extra electrical connection. Could this be that? It would be easier if it was that.

The cardiologist – middle-aged, hair slicked back – gestures for me to sit. He starts off with a joke, ‘I don’t usually have patients this young.’

I laugh, awkward. Humiliation colours my cheeks. He goes through my heart ultrasound and the results of the Holter monitor I’ve been wearing for a week. He delivers his verdict. There’s nothing wrong with me.

‘You mentioned you’re in uni?’ he says. ‘Maybe it’s just stress.’

I laugh again, the sound faint and choked off. His flippant tone feels like nails digging beneath my skin. But this is good, right? It’s great I don’t have a heart condition.

It took me two years – after which the anxiety had gotten so bad I could no longer leave the house – to realise, however tangentially, that he’d been right.

An anxiety disorder had never crossed my mind. It was unthinkable. A heart condition was more acceptable than a mental one. A heart condition wouldn’t be my fault; it could be blamed on genetics, on an organ falling out of whack. But an anxiety disorder – that would be myfault, because why aren’t you strong enough? Why can’t you just knuckle through it? How will you succeed if you’re going to break down at every little thing?

Breakdown. I hate that word. When I argue with my parents, in moments when emotions run high and Dad resorts to a low blow, that’s the word he uses. ‘It’s not like you had a hard childhood,’ he snaps. ‘Yet you blame me. For giving you “stress”. It’s always my fault, isn’t it? That everytime I ask you to do something you have a nervous breakdown.’

‘Nervous’ – not ‘afraid’, not ‘terrified’, not ‘convinced-I’m-dying’– but nervous. A word you use for your fluttering stomach on the first day of school, not when you’re curled up on a filthy tiled floor trying to catch your breath.

‘Breakdown’ – like a faulty car, a malfunction, something which needs to be fixed. Breaking apart. Plunging downwards. Falling, no ground in sight.

My heart is in my throat, pulsing erratically. I’m convinced if I open my mouth it will leap out and flop to the sticky vinyl floor, flailing limply like a dying fish.

The rattling of the tram blurs into the background of my thumping heart. Bodies press close; I smell sweat and musk and spilled curry. The tram clatters to a halt and the doors finally – finally – fold open. I stumble onto the dirt-smeared tiles of the Flinders Street tram stop. My legs give out. I’m on the ground, gasping.

They ask if I need an ambulance. I say no. They ask what’s wrong with me. I say I don’t know.

In the aftermath of the panic attacks, my world shrinks.

At first it’s just the trams. Then it’s the trains. Just the thought of sitting still in a moving metal can, bodies boxing me in, propels a spike of dread through my chest. Then it’s the local shopping centre. My favourite restaurants. The street outside my house.

Once these desperate feelings that I’ve kept at bay for years smash through, they flood me like a tide. In less than a week, my world collapses to just my house and my bed. Any more is torture.

Please understand – I didn’t mean to. I don’t mean to be isolated from my friends. I don’t mean to be forced to attend online classes. I don’t mean to be difficult.

Easy things become intolerable. A simple grocery run is an insurmountable task. Dread and fear grasp at me like shackles. Anxiety becomes my glass prison, from which I stare out enviously at all these normal people doing normal things I once could. But I’m trying. I really am.

You believe me, don’t you?

Heart kicking— Cold slithering like worms down my spine—

Rolled up in bed, fear staining the back of my throat—

Fingers clenched around a bright green handrail, so tight my knuckles glow white, as if the train were a rollercoaster—

What is anxiety? I ask, desperately.

It’s part of the fight-or-flight response, I tell myself. The lizard part of our savage brains, which kept us alive when humans were hunter-gatherers.

Thanks, me. When you put it that way, it seems so reasonable. But why do I still panic now when I know there’s nothing to fear?

It’s a negative feedback loop, you silly thing. You had one bad experience in public, so your brain has associated those places with danger. The more you avoid them, the more your subconscious is convinced they’re dangerous. Your brain – my brain – is just trying to protect me.

Fuck my brain; it’s being stupid. It’s made this a battle against myself. My own mind and body, in their desperation to protect me from a non-existent threat, are betraying me. There’s no defeating it. Not truly; not ever.

And yet …

It doesn’t happen with a bang. Not like the movies. Instead, it happens like this:

I take a seat on the train, headphones snug against my ears. I inhale; hold; breathe out.

My stomach still clenches, my heart still throbs. The thrumming voice at the back of my mind screams for me to run, but I don’t.

I breathe, and I catalogue every sensation: the roil of my stomach, the pressure against my chest, the vice around my throat.

For just a moment, the panic subsides, and it’s like fog dissipating on a sunny afternoon. I see two silver-haired women huddled together on the priority seat, a rusty trolley sandwiched between them; several seats down, a man in a flannel shirt sits with his golden retriever curled up at his feet. I cannot help but wonder what their stories are.

I make it five stops before the anxiety returns and I’m forced to get off. It’s barely anything, but it’s progress.