Remember that time?

I had a panic attack.

It wasn’t my first panic attack. Or my last. But it was the worst I’d ever felt in my short life.

I was young and brand new in a job that had taken me to a new home in an unfamiliar town. This major life change, on top of years of living with unaddressed anxiety, were taking their toll.

The attack came out of nowhere while I was sitting in a movie theater on a Saturday afternoon watching a matinee by myself. One minute I was sipping my Diet Coke, snacking on popcorn and rooting for the heroine. The next minute, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, my heart was racing, forehead sweating and I knew that, if the presumed heart attack I was having didn’t kill me, something else was going to in the next 30 seconds.

I thought I was going to die.

This not-so-fond memory resurfaced this week when I was walking downtown. Leaving the hardware store, headed for home, I came across a distraught young man sitting on the curb. He was surrounded by a bicycle and what appeared to be bags of his possessions and he was screaming at the top of his lungs.  Ironically, the backdrop for this scene, literally a few inches behind him, was an A-frame sidewalk sign that read “Anxious pets? CBD sold here.”

The man’s shouts were not those of joy or excitement. They didn’t seem angry. And they were directed at no one. They were the nonsensical shouts of someone confused and hurting, needing to get stuff out of his head but not expecting anyone to listen.

I don’t know what this man was experiencing – anxiety, panic, delusions – but it was clear to anyone who walked by him that he was not in a good place. What he was feeling was not good. Just like I wasn’t feeling good in that movie theater so many years ago.

Seeing the man on the sidewalk took me back to that day in the theater when my genetics, brain chemistry and a thousand stressful life experiences all combined to explode in my head and my heart and release themselves in the form of complete and terrifying  panic. And I wondered, what would have happened if I hadn’t had the means to get help.

There are many reasons I am not sitting on the curb downtown screaming my lungs out. None of those reasons have anything to do with my character, my resilience or me not deserving to be someone sitting on a curb going out of my mind. I didn’t pull myself up by my bootstraps, I wasn’t “blessed” and I didn’t deserve to have all the resources I had any more than that man on the sidewalk deserved to not have resources.

The reason I am not sitting on the curb is because when I was hurting, I had a place to go to take care of myself. I had people who loved me and wanted me to be okay. I had a doctor to call and a way to pay that doctor. I had a home with a bed and clean sheets. And a kitchen table and a place to have a cup of tea, and friends and family to help me through.

But if I hadn’t had those things? If I hadn’t had the means to work through my anxiety? I would have done anything to feel better. When we feel horrible – afraid, unloved, insecure, sick, sad, hurt, guilty, alone – we just want to feel better. If I hadn’t had people to help me, I would have smoked cigarettes to calm myself. Without a doctor, I would have self-medicated with alcohol or drugs if they took away the terror I felt in that theater. And if I hadn’t had a home, I most likely would be sitting on a curb or a bench or a sidewalk doing anything I could to get through that moment.

I know many good people are working to provide mental health resources for those who need them. But for those of us who are not immersed in the everyday, life-changing work of finding a solution, perhaps just recognizing the humanity of that person on the sidewalk will help to ease some pain. Maybe remembering the time that life was hard for us and how we couldn’t have gotten through it without our family or friends or doctors or morning runs or medication or cups of tea or glasses of wine will soften our hearts enough to make tiny changes for the better. To be a little kinder, a little more patient, a bit less judgmental. A little more loving.

Let’s take care of ourselves. Let’s take care of each other.