This incident began as soon as I walked through the front door.
I had been getting these awful panic attacks every day for weeks, and this one really snuck up on me. One minute I was just fine, getting out of my car holding a couple of grocery bags, and the next, I felt like there was no longer enough air in the world.
The worst part about these attacks I had been getting, was that each time, I was convinced that this was “the one”. This time something really was wrong with me, and I really was going to die. I may have been able to narrowly escape death on all of the other ones before this one, but now its really going to kill me.
I threw the bags on the floor, right next to the shoe rack. I remember hearing a dull thud as the cans of tuna I had bought settled on top of the loaf of white bread.
“Alright, alright, you know what to do.” I told myself between shallow breaths.
I had read a book on anxiety, and I remember it told me that the next time I had an attack, was to pretend my feet were stuck to the floor and do nothing. Don’t fight it, don’t resist it. Just let my heart beat like crazy, let myself feel like I was suffocating.
If I resisted and fought back, it would only make things worse. What we resist, persists, right?
So I took my own advice. I stood there in the middle of my dirty little kitchen, repeating to myself: “I accept these feelings, I accept these thoughts”
The anxiety spiked at first, but then started to reduce, it always comes in waves for me. I stood there for a few more minutes, breathing in….and out….in…and out until my hands stopped shaking and I regained some control of myself.
That’s when I heard something groan upstairs.
What the hell was that? I thought to myself. My panic attack had pretty much subsided, leaving as quickly as it came. But now this was giving me something else to potentially worry about. I didn’t have any pets, so it couldn’t have been that.
“Hello?” I shouted. I knew I would have NOPE-d it the hell out of there if someone had answered me, but what else was I supposed to say?
There was another noise, a crashing sound. I went to the sink and grabbed a knife, at this point I was really starting to feel uneasy. I walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. Nothing there. I slowly started to climb the stairs. It could be some kind of critter, I kept telling myself, not wanting to think about the possibility of it being a man up there, crouched in a dark corner, ready to spring out at me.
When I got to the top step, I poked my head around the corner of the wall and peered down the hall. There was one door to the right, one to the left, and one at the end of the hall. I decided to check the bathroom first. All clear. Spare room next, there was nothing there either. I crept down the hall, wiping my hand across the front of my shirt to get a better grip on the knife.
As I approached my bedroom door, I could actually hear my heart pounding in my chest. I pushed the door open and lunged into the room, ready to defend myself if I had to. But there was no one there. Instead, I found a brown rectangle on the floor, peeking out from underneath my bed.
I put the knife down on the bed and knelt down on the floor. This board had the entire alphabet on it, along with the words “Yes” and “No” and the word “Goodbye” written across the bottom.
Does anybody know what the hell this is??
I’ll be sure to keep you guys up to date if anything happens.