Page 1 of Driving Me Mad (Sanity 1)

My stomach heaves, the wretched sound of vomit falling into the toilet echoes in the air as my hands grip the seat. Rebecca, my best friend and roommate, is holding my hair and rubbing my back. I hate this. High school was supposed to be the end of my anxiety and panic attacks. College was supposed to be better. It was not supposed to bring my anxiety back and make it worse than ever before. Maybe I should be grateful that I was able to maintain it for three and a half years. I should be, but I’m not.

I rest my head on my hand, waiting to see if another wave will hit me.

“You should see someone,” Rebecca says softly. “It’s becoming uncontrollable.” And that’s saying something for the girl who doesn’t understand what it’s like, but is still there for me. “Maybe call your old therapist and make an appointment?”

What she doesn’t know is that I’ve kept in contact with my former therapist, Trace Lexington. During the past three and a half years, he sends a text at random times, asking how I’m doing. We’ll text on and off for a few days and then I won’t hear from him for a while. I’ve been having a rough day for the past month. I could really use a text from him.

“Maybe,” I tell her, though the possibility of an appointment with him is unlikely. I don’t want to see a therapist again, and certainly not Trace. I’m comfortable with him, but I don’t know. He feels like more than simply the professional I saw for all four years of high school. We sort of became friends, especially since I stopped seeing him when I left for a university five hours away from home. What would he think of me now? Hunched over a toilet, my hands trembling, clearly showing my anxiety. My stomach clenches again, and I squeeze my eyes closed. I don’t know how much more vomiting I can take.

“I think I’m done.” I slowly stand, knowing if I move too fast, the nausea will return. I rinse my mouth out before brushing my teeth.

“He would take a phone session, right? Or, what about a counselor here on campus?”

Thankfully, there’s a toothbrush in my mouth, and I refuse to talk until I’m done. This is one of those things that Rebecca doesn’t understand. I don’t want to see a therapist again. I had this under control, which is why we felt comfortable ending my sessions completely when I moved away for college. Things were fine my first three years here. Why has it returned for my last semester? My anxiety has been slowly trickling back into my system like a slow-acting poison since the summer started, but with the start of my last semester, it’s been back in full force. I’ve lost every ounce of control I worked so hard to gather and maintain.

I spit and rinse again.

“Well?” Rebecca asks, following me back into our dorm room.

“I don’t know, Bec,” I sigh, sitting down on my twin bed.

She takes a seat on hers, criss-crossing her legs. “If you’ve seen one before, what’s the difference in seeing one again?”

I drop my head, squeezing my wrist repeatedly, one of my nervous habits. “There’s a difference.” That’s all I say.

I don’t want to admit how I’ve failed. How I’ve failed with my anxiety and how I’m failing my senior year. Today’s attack was brought on by making yet another freaking C on a paper. I’ve never made anything below a B my entire life and this semester alone, I’ve gotten five C’s. Five! How am I going to graduate on time if I fail this semester? Because I feel like that’s going to happen.

My weekly phone calls with my parents don’t help either. Their intentions are good, and I know they don’t mean to stress me out further, but they are. I’ve never been so stressed in my life. My parents have always instilled in me the desire to do my absolute best, to be my absolute best, and to give it my all the first go-around, not on the second chance.

I’m a perfectionist. I hate it because it’s part of my problem with anxiety. Trace and I used to talk about it a lot. He’ll even bring it up some when we text. Up until now, I’ve done well. Maybe I could text him and see if he can call me later. Just see if I can talk to him. We talked over the phone some last year when I had a few spells with my anxiety. He’s always been able to calm me.

“Brittany,” Rebecca repeats. I lift my head. “Are you still with me?”

“Yeah, I am.” My eyes flick to the alarm clock. “I need to get to class.”

She nods. I grab my bag and cell phone and leave for class. In an attempt to calm myself, I allow my mind to wander to Trace. He’s fantastic. He helped me when my parents were at a loss as to how. He helped me gain control of my anxiety. He helped me conquer it and my other small issues that made my anxiety worse. He was understanding when I battled depression on top of my anxiety. He was my life saver. There’s no telling what would have happened to me if my parents hadn’t made me an appointment with him.

Plus, he isn’t too bad on the eyes.

He’d probably be disappointed in me now. With a setback like this, how could he not be? I am. On my walk across campus, I make the hasty decision to call him.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

“The caller you are trying to reach is unavailable.”

The air is knocked out of my lungs as the call goes to voicemail, and I hang up without leaving a message.

My disappointment shouldn’t be so

deep and vast. It’s the beginning of a workday. Of course he’s not going to answer. A part of me was still hoping he would, though. I start moving my feet again, not realizing I had stopped in the first place. Numb, I finish the walk to my class. Crap. My eyes quickly analyze my reflection in the glass of the door before I open it.

I’ve never looked this bad before. I’ve lost twenty pounds, and I only had ten available to lose. Anything I do manage to eat, I throw it back up in the morning. There are dark bags under my eyes from getting about two hours of sleep a night. Maybe I should seek out a counselor on campus. I can’t deny things are bad.

My denial is that they’re bad enough to need to see one again.

With a sigh, I open the door. My phone vibrates in my hand from a text. A sigh of relief leaves me at seeing Trace’s name.

Trace: Hey, busy day for me, but I’ll call you soon, okay? Hope everything is okay.

I quickly text him back.

Me: Not okay. I’ll be waiting.

Already, I feel a smidgen better knowing I’ll talk to Trace soon. Now, I just need to survive the day. Throughout my class, I take rigorous notes. I write twice as many as the other students; you never know when something small the professor says might be the one thing you need. I also have a tape recorder for anything I might have missed, for me to jot down later.

Despite my panic attacks, I love college. The social atmosphere is great, I’ve made friends, and there’s always a good time waiting around the corner. I even love the academic part of it, if only it wasn’t causing me so much trouble.

When I make it back to my dorm for the day, I arrive before my best friend. I decide to get started on some work and try not to repeatedly glance at my phone, waiting for it to light up with a call from Trace. I need him so badly right now. Our texting has been more consistent this past year, and part of my anxiety is because I haven’t heard from him in the last month.

Did I do something wrong to upset him? Is he having a tough time right now, too? Trace is such a great therapist and friend because he gets it. He’s told me before how he deals with depression himself. He doesn’t talk about it often, but if mentioning his ordeal can help me, then he will. Last we talked, he was struggling a little. He said he was managing, though. But what if he isn’t and that’s why I haven’t heard from him?

“We need a girls’ night,” Rebecca declares as she bursts into the room, her eyes finding me hovering over my textbook. “You need a break and we haven’t gone out in ages.”

“We went to a party last weekend!” I defend. Mostly because I don’t want to go anywhere tonight.

“You need this,” she says slowly. “You’ve been more stressed than usual. We’ll go out, have some fun, and be back in time for you to redo your paper again.” She rolls her eyes, her way of poking fun at me. When I don’t answer her right away, she adds, “Going to that party last week helped a little, right?”

She has a point. It did help take my mind off things for a while, but I’m not going to tell her that.

Rebecca delivers her final blow. “Unless you’re calling the grinch, then get your ass up and get ready.”

I huff. She’s backed me into a corner. When I first explained my anxiety and depression to Rebecca, she was the perfect, attentive, trying-to-be-understanding friend. When she saw me go through my first out-of-control panic attack before Christmas break my sophomore semester when I couldn’t hide my turmoil, she felt bad. She dragged me out when I didn’t feel like going. Ever since, she came up with a code word of sorts. If things feel bad enough that I want her to leave me be, I can “call the grinch” and she’ll give me twenty-four hours before trying to cheer me up in her own little way again.

“Fine. We’ll go,” I concede. Trace hasn’t called me yet anyway. This will help distract me from that.

An hour later, Rebecca is dragging me to a club not too far from campus. The place is crowded, on par for a Thursday night in a college town. The bass reverberates against the walls, almost making me want to close my eyes and focus on the vibrations in my body. Instead, Rebecca pulls me straight to the dance floor and begins dancing with me.

It only takes seven minutes before someone wants to dance with her. I take the opportunity to head to the bar for a drink. Water, of course. It didn’t take long after turning twenty-one to realize that the label on my medication was a serious warning. It’s something I don’t want to experience ever again. While I wait for the bartender to bring me a glass, I check my phone.

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