Nervous Breakdown

Before last winter I had never had a nervous breakdown. I did not know what it felt like until it happened. When it happened it became obvious; “I’m having a nervous breakdown!” I told myself in between clutching my hair, gasping and biting my fist. I was crouched down on the floor, my mind trapped in a closed loop of anxiety that dumped physical pressure down into my chest, making my heart-rate increase and my breathing difficult; giant waves of hot and cold despair rolled over my back; these physiological effects made a feedback loop that in turn increased the panic. I felt like my body had become trapped inside my mind while my mind was caught in a tight loop: I had to act; I could not act; I had to act; but I could not act. I was running out of time on a work project that was due the next day and this caused a kind of physical paralysis; my ability to do anything at all—except panic—had been disabled. This lasted for ten terrible minutes until I gained the wherewithal to walk outside into the rain-slashed New Jersey night where a giant squall was ripping down out of the Meadowlands across the industrial plateau: it was that kind of storm where it’s hard to stand up in. After being buffeted in the face by the wind and rain for a minute, the doom-loop quit cycling and my mind returned to some degree of ragged functioning and I went back to work.