It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I have certainly missed my goal of one week entries, but now I’ll just label that schedule as “whenever I can.”

My book, A Guardian Angel had a free weekend last weekend on Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select program. In two days, it was downloaded 204 times and was beating out the free sample of a James Patterson book in the Free Assassination Thrillers section. The book is going free again THIS WEEKEND and this time I actually advertised the promotion, so I’d like to beat my previous record. This is really exciting times for me as the book was not doing well at all before this point (6 sales, 40 downloads) and it’s understandable. For my first novel I chose to write a 440 page epic instead of an erotica novella or something that actually sells in the indie market. That’s okay. I have more books on the way.

While I’m still talking about publishing stuff, I also have been releasing a couple of my short stories for free on Smashwords. These have been doing really well and its some of the first stuff I’ve had out on the market to get a 5 star review from a stranger. I’m working on a few more and a series of short novellas to hold my thirst for publication off while I work on the Alfred Arnold rewrite, which is 40% complete now.

Onto the main topic of this article, my panic disorder has worsened. I am waiting for my healthcare card to be sent to be because I got some awesome Obamacare, but until then, my triggers have become more and more sensitive. At work, I get under a livable wage in both hours and just plain hourly, but at over 25 hours in a week, I start having panic attacks every day. It makes going to work difficult, and makes my managers upset because when I have an attack, I either have to call off or be sent home early. They’ve stopped letting me call off for panic attacks and just let me sit down for a few minutes to recompose myself (breaks aren’t allowed in the business normally).

For those of you who have never had a panic attack, or those who have attacks and want to compare their symptoms, the most noticeable feature of an attack is my pulse. Depending on how severe the attack is, I will begin to think that either my heart is going to slow to a stop or beat until it bursts. It makes my chest hurt and I have this tightening in my abdomen (this is called “guarding” and it makes you wince to the touch) and it feels like vomiting or passing out might be the only thing to relieve the tension. Often I will vomit and it is very acidic, most likely accumulated in a rapid moment of stress. My legs will tingle and start to twitch, as if someone was hitting my knee with a rubber mallet, and during the worst of attacks I lose communication to them and can no longer walk. I also twitch and spasm, I’m guessing they’re nervous ticks, odd things to subconsciously calm myself down, though it really freaks out any spectators. During the whole ordeal, I want to start crying or to scream because I can’t think of a time I’ve ever been more scared. Despair follows. After the attack is complete, I am left exhausted and expended. Every muscle is clenched in a bracing manner during an attack, which might last up to an hour.

There are a lot of people out there that suffer from severe panic disorders, and any one of them can tell you how crippling it become. My phone rings, and I have a panic attack. When I wake up to an alarm or because I was startled, I have a panic attack. My friend starts screaming about how useless his League of Legends team is in the other room, I have a panic attack. The mere prospect of calling into work, or asking a girl out, or going to a job interview are so nerve racking that I have actually stood up beautiful women and good jobs because I was too afraid to leave my house. I get nervous and feel like an attack might come on almost all of the time, especially when my friends ask me if I want to go to a party with them, or my dad asks me to go get coffee and it makes it painful to do any of these things, so I decline. All my friends think of me as a stickler, the guy who could say “No” to a nice evening at a restaurant, the guy they should never ask to have fun with them because he’ll just stay home.

I think they think I like it this way.

So I’m lonely, and I’m angry because I always feel abandoned even though I know it is myself doing the abandoning. Panic disorders have a serious impact on a person’s social life. I stumble over my words in every conversation, as if I was a boyfriend conversing with my partner’s father for the first time. And I was sixteen. So if you know someone with a panic disorder and you’re fed up with their hermit lifestyle, please, have some patience with them. And ask them if they like living like that. Then you’ll know.

If you suffer like I do, there’s hope. The first cure is just that: hope. It’s easy to slip into a depression because it feels like it will never change, BUT IT CAN! It’ll be hard work, but YOU can cure your panic disorder. The best step for this is therapy. Therapy can be helpful to anybody, but for us, we can use it to identify our triggers and talk about all of our nervous worries. In your own time, you can do what I do. I meditate every day, and it lets me have those worrying thoughts and little fleets of heart, but then I let it go and it feels like washing all the panic grime off my body. Anytime I listen to Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” it’s like a full body massage and I get to relax. Truly.

So that’s my spiel today. My book goes on a free weekend tomorrow, so those of you who are interested should definitely download it then. Have a great week and I’ll see you next time.