Au Revoir, but not Goodbye

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I had a panic attack last week. Not a panicky moment, or a panicky thought. A Panic Attack. My third in a lifetime of lowgrade panic. I was probably born panic-stricken, though I can't remember. My mother, who was as prone to lying as the next mother, always denied my congenitally-anxious state.

"You're just Sensitive," she'd say, with a capital S, as if this were a gift.

Let's get something straight, bub. Sensitivity is not a gift, not in my book (which has been banned in fifty states, including the state of unrest, where I live). All you sensitives out there know of what I speak. There is nothing remotely special about skulking through life at the mercy of...everything.

Your average asshole walks down the street and doesn't think twice (this is evident from our current political situation, but that's a whole other thang). Your average sensitive asshole walks down the street and thinks 247 times about anything and everything vaguely connected to that street, meanwhile kicking herself in the ovaries for having chosen to embark on this particular walk down this particular street in the first place.

I'm an ex-pat in my own life.

The first time I had a panic attack, I was sure I was dying. This was followed by four hours in Emergency, followed by a crash course in PA 101 administered by a young -- and I must admit stalwart -- intern. I was sent on my way with a prescription for horse tranquilizers, which, not being particularly equine, I stuffed into the murky recesses of the third-floor medicine cabinet and soldiered on. There they remain to this day, a cautionary tail. Er, tale.

A whole other thang.

When I first met my husband, in an attempt to warn him about what he was getting into, I waxed metaphoric. I told him I "had no skin." Twenty-five skinless years later, he gets it. Unlike John McCain.

At one point mid-marriage, he (my husband, not John McCain) presented me with one of those coffee-table psychology books, "HSP: The Highly Sensitive Person." I rolled my eyes and sucked my gums and thanked him. A few weeks later, stranded in a blizzard, I picked the thing up. My hands shook. My heart palpitated. My brow dampened. I couldn't put it down. And that was just the Foreword. I fortified myself with a barrel of whiskey -- those were the Jack days, jack -- and read on. Later I rolled the barrel out to the end of the driveway and planted lemons. Er, geraniums.

So. I'm not alone. Like that helps.

At the onset of a panic attack, things feel slightly surreal. Not the "I must be fucking dreaming!!!" kind of surreal Sarah Palin has visited upon the thinking population. More a kind of feathery acid-flashback surreal, like if you look too closely at the toaster, it might begin to speak. Possibly in tongues. Possibly in French tongues. Which, having been to France for eight days three months earlier, you miraculously understand. This is followed by a floaty honeymoon period of vague discontent before the real fun begins.

Wanna learn more? Wiki it. I did. After lowering myself from the ceiling fan where I'd been circling for the better part of an afternoon. Possibly a lifetime.

Occupational hazard.

But the real question remains: did Sarah Palin cause my panic attack?

(Good ole rootin', tootin', huntin', shootin', rapin', pillagin', Palin'?)

In a word, yew-betcha.

In this house built of straws we call Modern Life, she's the last one. My house, your house, there goes the neighborhood. The whole fucking world. It's all coming down around us. What's going on? Who are these people? Why isn't anyone stopping them? WHAT'S HAPPENING TO US???

Make that US, with a capital U.S. Does anybody even remember what that "U" stands for? If these people win this election, I am no longer US. I relinquish US status. I'm officially UN. As in UNheard, UNseen, UNdone, UNinterested, UNdertaken, UNderground. As in no more politics, no more news media, no more NPR or PBS or BBC, no more pollin', no more votin', no more countin', no more carin', no more nothin'. I'm finished. Vamoosed. Outta the building. Gone drinkin'.

I'm gettin' that surreal feelin' again, just writin' this.

Sting operation.

There's a movement afoot (UNderfoot): Women Against Sarah Palin. WASP. Has a certain ironic ring to it, don't-chew-thank?

Guess that makes me HS WASP. Which sounds kinda like a ship. Well, I'm certainly adrift. Woman without a country, and all that. But not without a state. Even if it's only the state of UNrest.



http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2O3Xk3iTLgI