#escriveine writes

[escriveine]

Panic Attacks, in 3 Acts (Act III)

Content Warning: explicit discussion of panic attacks and related anxiety disorder NB: There will be 3 acts because that’s the number of different kinds of panic attacks I’ve personally experienced. A panic attack is, at its most fundamental, a story.  And what that story is — or may mean — depends almost entirely on your point of view.

Act III: Pentimento

Well, now, here i̶t̵ ̵c̷o̶m̴e̵s̵.  The third act, the third kind of panic attack, the kind that I hate (and let’s be honest, fear) the most.  The physically-induced kind that waits, coiled and impatient, right b̷e̸h̵i̸n̸d̶ ̵t̷h̴e̵ ̴w̸a̵l̵l̵ of my sternum to expand and overwhelm me nearly every day for the past few months.  And when it does, it’s never a surprise, but it’s always a shock. I’ve actually tried to quasi-liveblog one of these events at least ̶̼̆s̶̟͊e̴͎̾ṿ̴̉è̵͇ṉ̴͊?̴̩̉ times since they started in February, but something always happened either while I was typing or before I could actually save the text.  One time there was a power outage that trashed the post I was composing. Another time I fell asleep over the keyboard and by the time I woke up my laptop had run out of power, wiping out that iteration of the post, too.  After that, I worked more carefully, editing a local file, though I could only manage the odd dribs and drabs of text.  Then one night, after my laptop decided to update and reboot itself without so much as a by-your-leave, the file was gone.  A simple series of technical glitches that sound more significant than they probably are because they’re listed all together.  Nothing insurmountable, but it felt like a cycle as inescapable as the panic attacks themselves.  Fact as strange as fiction, I suppose. But I’m writing around the matter; historiography instead of history.  Probably because I feel it creeping up on me right now, and I want to deny its progress, the way a child covers her eyes to make the ̷m̵o̷n̸s̸t̸e̷r̵s stay away. It starts as a feeling that something is...off.  Something barely at the threshold of  perception, trivially dismissed like a stray thought.  Or reflux, because that’s something that happens more often than I’d like, but is infintely preferable to what my subconscious is unwilling to admit is coming. And though denial and rationalization may be the normal, even reflexive human response to this kind of aberration, they’re worse than unhelpful now.  I need to notice, or more precisely, to realize I’m noticing these portents, these telltales before I can do something more to halt their progress. (I’ve consulted multiple specialists, and take high doses of multiple medicines to keep these things at bay, and yet.  And yet.  And yet I thought the ravages of the near-constant migraines and the progress in managing other persistent conditions meant I should once again try the 3-month-duration injections that we’d put on indefinite hiatus because of their increasingly wretched side effects.  And the February injection worked:  the migraines receded.  But the floodgates to these ̷o̶t̶h̵e̷r̵ effects didn’t just open, they damn well shattered. I knew it was a possibility, I even knew the mechanism: paradoxical spasms in my esophagus or coronary micro-vessels, or both.  Acute anxiety can accompany either condition because spasms near or on the heart and trachea can interfere with breathing and bloodflow — two things sure to make the body, the brain decide death is fast approaching.  Even when the trouble is almost certainly non-lethal and transitory, if not exactly quick.  But just like a well-devised optical illusion, simply understanding what you’re experiencing doesn’t let you control or overcome it.) Shallowing breaths become fast enough to drag my attention back into my body.  This isn’t asthma, I wish it was asthma, but it’s easy to take a deep breath, let it out again.  And yet there’s a tightness in my chest, beneath flesh and bone and sinew.  Breath after breath cannot ease it, cannot quell the rising ̴̧̲͐f̶̙̀͜e̸̫͋̀ả̴͚̤r̸̛̜͙ that perhaps this time is different, perhaps this is the time when it’s not a passing spasm, but the time I—no, no! I know what this is, I recognize it, as hazy as the memory seems, as elusive as the thought — the very capacity for thought —feels in this moment.  I’ve practiced this, practiced for this, over and over, day after day, conditioning myself to a particular action after a specific trigger.  The whole world is contracting around me, awareness spiralling to a singular awareness of terrifying mortality, sensations distilling into a singular awareness that ̸͙̮͓̹̯̗̮̙̜̼̲̅̇ḿ̵̡̖̘͚̇̿͒͂̆̂͒͂͑́͋͘͠ȳ̷̜̩̯̠̞̼̼̆͗̈̔͑̆̋̇͘̚̕͝ ̶̧̧̛̪͈͔̹̞͚̥̰͔̣́͆̆͋̋̍̑̐͑͛̎̍̾̀̇͘ͅH̴̪͍̖̭̎̇̉̃̀͛̌̊́̋Ḛ̸̪̦̥͕̪̆͊̍Ă̷̳̪͙̟̓͌͛͊͗̐̊̂̍̀͊̀̄̈͝Ŗ̵̢̧͎̗̜̰͖̞͇̬̰̬͍̼̤̜̾͑͘͜Ţ̵̨̢̗̝̟̻͎̫̳̫͈̻̩̙̬̳͖̋̿̋́̂ ̵̛̘̠̫͖͕͔̥̩̗̳̩͚̣͈͚̘̈́̇̍̐́̀̋̏̀͛̕͜͜h̸͔̥̗̜̺̼͑̏͋̐̐̌͆́̂̿̿̿̑͑̓̆͝ǘ̶͈͍̉̽͛̓̉̇̉̕̚͝ŕ̴̯͔̞̖͚̖̙̺̦̪̹̘̲͖́͑͛̃̐̅͂̎̾̀̕͜͝t̶̢̝͍̫͔̥͔̲̗͔̀̂͐͑̂̐̌͑̄̒š̵̗̲̱͑̎͐̐̓̈́́̈́̂̏̃͗͛̕̕͝͝... I reach for the medication that I have near me at all times and manage seemingly by muscle memory alone to take one pill. I drink down as much water as I can, clinging to the sweet coolness as it travels through my tortured chest, trying to focus on how pleasant the water is and not on the insinuation from nowhere by my own brain that it might be the last drink I ever get to take. I call the thought a lie, tell my brain it’s not in mortal peril, to stand down, to stop warning me about something I’m already fully, painfully aware of.  But no matter what I try to focus on, distract myself with, I’m overwhelmed, overcome, fucking overwritten with the utterly pervasive and sure knowledge that my death is as imminent as it is immanent.  All I can think of, no matter how I try, are my all-too-numerous unfinished stories, the dozens of other projects underway yet incomplete, the garden poised between blooming and unrealized fruition, the lost opportunities of roads untravelled and soon unreachable.  Words spoken freely, but perhaps not intently or often enough; time irretrievably lost to vagaries of chronic, disabling illnesses.  Above all else, the outright theft of years in the company of my kith and kin, of my beloved, my darling, light and lodestone of my soul. I know with a certainty you could crack rocks on that he knows I love him with every fiber of my being, every shred of my spirit and even my sanity. Yet as the waiting stretches out and out and out — I would say interminably, but no, it still all feels horribly, inescapably terminal — I keep wondering if that was enough.  If I was enough.  I desperately want to do more, be more, but it feels like there’s no time, even as the seconds sweep relentlessly past.  My thoughts are an absolute frenzy of the need to do something, especially in what feel like the last moments I’ll have to do anything, but it’s like I’m being suspended in amber, a mere fleck caught in a preserved instant that already had its time and only continues to exist by chance and the tender mercies of those who carried on. I take a long breath, and another, then a third.  The medicine will work soon, I recall dimly, so dimly, reaching for that merest glede of memory and hope in the lowering dark of my thoughts.  My pulse will stop hammering out memento mori, memento mori, memento mori... And if it does not, if my vision darkens further, if my fingers turn blue, or my lips go numb, there is another medicine I also keep near me at all times.  But the moment for that is not yet here, and allowing the ̵̢̨̺̭̇̌͌̈́̆̐̕f̸͉̲͚̥̞̎̔́̽e̸͍̦̯̻͓̩̼̦̩̋͋̎̌͊̐ȁ̶̫̭̯͈̗̰͍̙͊̍̑̒̃̉͊ͅŕ̶͕̻͈̗̓̈̾̿̈́̕̕ to fully overwrite my volition will only hasten either my need or my ̶͇̃d̸͉̗͖͝o̸̱͛ͅo̸͎̞̪͊̅̒m̶̝̝̔̆. Scant minutes have passed by my watch’s telling, once I remember how to look, yet I need to collect tens of them and s̸͇͕̫̋̈́̂̿͐t̵͉͎̯̳̼̆̽̇i̵̗̦̼̮̕ḷ̷͇̎̅̽̆͗l̸̞̖͉͎̃ ̵̳̤́̏m̷͔̝̃̉̈̈̕ͅỵ̴͉͍̣͂̔̎̌̐ ̸̠̋̆̕h̴͔̹͋e̴̫͆́ā̶̻̱͒̂r̸̜͚̤̃̔̈́ẗ̷͉́͌̎̀͒ ̴̫̭͙̫̕ḩ̵͖͂̍̈̏ụ̸̪̬̤̥̒̂͝r̷̳̰͙͎̈́͂̀͠t̷̨̖̋ŝ̶̯̜̯̬.̶̘̄̓́͛̕ I scrabble for more distractions, ways to not think about my breathing or the dolorous thudding in my chest or death, death, ḓ̶̗̯͐̇̓͝ͅe̶͚͑ͅa̴̬̤͍͌́̈̾t̷̬̞̏̚h̷̝̬͍̏̀̀͝.̵̡͓̩͖̓͌̕͝.̴̧̼͍̿͗͝.̴͓̐  But there are only so many times you can kiss your cats and and whisper goodbye just in case, or tell your beloved that you’re scared of something so repetitive it’s become routine, even expected. It’s not that he wouldn’t care, or wouldn’t offer comfort; it’s that... it’s that... I want to keep this... contagion away from him.  Panic is, after all, contagious, and even if he were here right now, even if I were about to die, here in the home we made together for so long, why would I want his final memories of my life to be my gasping, weeping terror?  But I’m not going to die, the panic is a malicious tale told by a liar, and I know the more I focus on it, the more reality it gains. I reach for something to make, to finish, one more (one last, whispers the liar) act of creation, to empty myself into and leave behind (a legacy, sneers the liar, such a thin thread to your memory can’t endure).  I open one of my WIPs, holding back the tears of urgency to finish just one more thing.  And the thing I want to eke out just a little more of, even if I can’t finish, is McShep fanfic (ridiculous, mocks the liar).  Because, as I’ve told my two dearest people, those stories are all written for her, and are, in their emotional core, about my beloved.  I stare at the screen, but the words have no meaning, and I can’t connect to the words I want to write. I love you, I love you, I think to them, willing the feeling into the words already there, since I can’t add more. (NB: Put it this way: remember the scariest moment of your entire life.  Maybe it was the split-second before a car wreck, or the edge of hysteria when your secret phobia was triggered, or the time you couldn’t keep your head above water in the deep end of the pool.  Take that moment, stretch it out so that it persists without diminishing, and THEN try to do something creative.  Draw a portrait, paint a landscape, compose a poem, write a story.  I can tell you now that the adrenaline of fight, flight, or freeze doesn’t lend itself well to any of that.) Eventually, with the same near-imperceptibility as the initial build-up, the panic drains away. At some point, I’ll have stopped involuntarily touching my sternum, and my body will register fatigue and hunger.  I’ll make a note of how many pills, and what kind, I needed to get through the episode.  Not that it matters, but it’s a small act of normalcy in the aftermath of terror.  I say aftermath, but it’s not really over — the sense of immediate doom may have faded, but the keen awareness of just how tenuous my continued existence really is remains vivid.  Humans aren’t meant to be so constantly aware of death, even if it really on the n̴͚̍e̵͓͝ȃ̸̻r̵͔͒ ̵͖̓h̶̫̏ȏ̵̰r̸̙͆i̴͓̅z̵̰͘o̵͕͗n̷̳̽.  So this Act doesn’t really have an ending, in part because there is no need to say goodbye, and in part because I know that all too soon the next beginning ̸̫̐c̴̜̈́ǒ̴͚m̵̺͑e̶͕͑s̵͍͘.̴̙̕

Read Act I: The Invisible Woman and Act II: The Lasso Way

[trainofcommand]

Time for some more Major Lorne-centric fic recs! Awesome. This is a mixed bag of things that I love.

The Long Way Home, by Requiem: This is Aiden Ford and Evan Lorne timeloop genfic. I love Ford. I love Lorne. I love timeloop fics. And I love things are super-well written, absorbing, and have a great resolution. Therefore, I adore this story. Just over 10 000 words, this fic is amazing. Read it with a yummy cup of hot chocolate, or maybe some nice biscuits.

Tu ferais quoi?, by Saschka: A very short Lorne/McKay fic where Evan asks Rodney what he would if DADT was repealed. Sweet, with a nice, gentle tone. In French, and just over 1000 words. A great little pick-me-up fic.

take this longing from my tongue, by MistressKat: A lovely Lorne/McKay fic that has Lorne pining, while also be awesome and great at his job. I love the longing here, and the story unfolds so well. I also love the way the author sets up the first sections of the story, with Evan's first, second, third, fourth, and fifth impression of McKay. It's awesome just brings you into the fic. At about 16 500 words, this is a great one to sit down to read with a nice cup of tea on a sunny afternoon.

a state of mind, not of the world, by @escriveine: This was written for me (me!!) and gosh, I LOVE it. It's Lorne/Zelenka, and also stars Teyla being amazing, and she gets nice things. Teyla deserves nice things. The central plot idea for this fic is so interesting and unique, and the writing is just beautiful, with such great descriptions and visuals. The Lorne POV is wonderful. I love everything about this fic, it makes me giddy. At about 7100 words, this is a great read to get cozy with.

[amuseoffyre]

escriveine

Okay, but I'm pretty sure having a phalanx of brilliant characters who live in the back of your mind and come forward to say clever things on demand is a super-power.

That’s the trouble, I’m afraid. They don’t do it on demand. They make me write something at their command and I’m staring at it, going “i don’t know what that means. what does that mean? is that a real word?” :D Googling a term and finding out it does make sense is a big relief, even the characters are all very much acting like “I told you so”.

[ao3feed-mcshep]

The Mourners

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2ShtEUj

by Anonymous

A boring mission to alien planet, and then things start getting weird.

I hope you like this, escriveine, I tried to get in the things you like. It was fun to write it for you

Words: 15625, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Stargate Atlantis

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay

Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard

Additional Tags: Adventure, Alien Planet, Canon Compliant, kind gay but that's kinda background, ronon and teyla are also in it but it's mostly about john let's be honest, Drama, Maybe a bit of fluff

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2ShtEUj

[escriveine]

Panic Attacks, in 3 Acts (Act II)

Content Warning: explicit discussion of panic attacks and related anxiety disorder NB: There will be 3 acts because that’s the number of different kinds of panic attacks I’ve personally experienced. A panic attack is, at its most fundamental, a story.  And what that story is — or may mean — depends almost entirely on your point of view.

Act II: The Lasso Way

There are certain telltales that you only see afterwards.   I don’t mean the hindsight related to a recent panic attack, wherein you replay the time leading up to it,  ruminating over what happened, what went wrong, what inflection points you missed (those fleeting instants where we like to think we could have changed course to a better outcome, had we but known they were approaching).  I’m talking about the bigger division of life into Before I Ever Had a Panic Attack (of this kind) and After. Watching Ted Lasso last year (2021 being well into my After time), I picked up on the telltales that insinuated themselves into the narrative in much the same way they would in a real-life panic attack. The sensory overload. Familiar shapes of people and objects smearing into streaks of color, sounds elongating and overlapping into an arrhythmic cacophony. Cold sweat forming in the middle of relentlessly trembling palms. Reality slewing into a microcosm of shallow, tight breaths and the syncopated tattoo flailing in place of a steady heartbeat. As the panic attack gathers steam it becomes more and more obvious to everyone around you.  There’s an edge of hilarity to it, really. The herky-jerky movements of your eyes tracking those colors and sounds you alone are mis-perceiving, the bellows action of your lungs moving huge gulps of air in and out to little effect.  The slip and dip maneuver you instinctively execute like you can either fade into the background away from the overwhelming stimuli or outrun the panic that’s rushing through your veins like a fucking shockwave. Once you’re out of the room, the show’s over as far as most everyone else is concerned.  Honestly, it probably happened so fast it was barely a funny little blip on their radar; the kind of glitch that people ellide and smooth over all the time.  Sometimes, though, just sometimes, you get lucky — though it feels like anything but good fortune in the moment — and some concerned soul follows you out.  Sometimes you get a Rebecca. Maybe your Rebecca has had a panic attack in the past; maybe they saw one happen in person before; maybe they were just paying enough attention to know you were in distress, not doing an absurdist bit.  Regardless, your Rebecca sees that you’re caught in what amounts to a horror boss fight loop.  Then out of the bedlam comes a low murmur, a steady rhythm of reassurance overriding your fractured control signals until you can see and hear and breathe again.  A hand on your shoulder becomes both tether and beacon back to the reality you left behind for those fleeting, yet excruciatingly endless moments. And then you’re back in your own skin, shaken by the sudden snap back to whatever passes for normal these days.  It was an awful trip, but this time you didn’t have to struggle through the long, strange journey all alone. Because your Rebecca noticed.

Read Act I: The Invisible Woman

[escriveine]

“Seriously, would you stop calling it a dry spell?!” Rodney squinted into the bottom of the plastic cup, hoping a hidden morsel of Jell-O would appear in the path of his questing spoon.

John took a big, crunchy bite of his apple to cover the smirk curling the corners of his mouth. Not that there was anybody else in the night-dimmed hallways they were walking through.

“Look, brilliant ideas are, like, a dime-a-dozen here, okay?” Rodney popped the sadly empty spoon into his mouth and sucked all the lingering traces of blue off it. “I mean, with me, and Sam, and even on occasion Radek coming up with new things all the time, it’s not really a question of great ideas, it’s more a question of translating those beautiful theories into—”

“Actual reality?” John deadpanned around his mouthful of fruit.

Rodney dropped the spoon into the dessert cup with a sigh. “Yeah, that. I mean, ‘dialing up the attraction’ between two things already predisposed to attraction sounds like it should be as straightforward as… ” He trailed off when he heard John snort out a laugh. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” John lied airily. “I mean, you set out to crank up some attraction, then end up making a pretty girl-bot, and you don’t see why people might say you’d been having a dry spell?”

“Oh, har-dee-har, Lieutenant Colonel Flirts-with-sexy-spaceship-captains!”

“Dammit, she tied me to a chair! Again!” John glowered and held up a hand between them. “And before you say anything, it was not in a fun way, and it was at gunpoint!”

Rodney shrugged noncommittally. “She does seem to have a thing about you and bondage…”

“How ‘bout we move on,” John muttered, then bit an over-sized chunk from his dwindling apple.

⸻

(A coda to Be All My Sins Remember’d, in which Rodney finds out what John did with all his recent late-night free time, John has an epiphany of his own, and together they finally figure out how to really make all right with their world. — Inspired by luluxa’s gorgeous McShep fanart Stained Glass) Read the rest on AO3

[escriveine]

Stargate Atlantis 4x05 Travelers

TL;DR: John flirts outrageously; Rodney observes intently. And I love these two obliviots.

Look, I hardly know where to start unpacking all this. The team is reunited, after having thought they lost John twice. They're bonding over a shared meal, as they so often do, but Rodney has clearly rushed through his food - not even finishing everything - just so he can watch John. We don't see Rodney's face here, but here's the thing: he's not moving. Consider what a rare thing that is: Rodney holding still and giving his full, undivided attention to someone. And all that pyroclastic intensity is currently focused on John.

And what does John do? He outright flirts with Rodney. It's not a subtle, blink and you miss it thing, either. He puts on a little performance for him, eating with care and deliberation, groaning with the sort of satisfaction you can easily imagine coming from Rodney during a good meal, or from a happy partner during sex, all while staring back at Rodney. Then the fucker WINKS at him, saying "That's good." In case Rodney somehow missed it.

Rodney's mouth runs on auto-snark, as per usual, but John just keeps eating and talking. And we know it's for Rodney's benefit because he then looks Rodney square in the face and says he's really beginning to appreciate what he has. Not in spite of his adventures with Larrin and crew, but because he was forcibly separated from Rodney. (And his team, and Atlantis, and non-reconstituted food, but come on, now, those are just the plausible deniability, the fig leaf our emotional turtle can hide behind if challenged.) And, just for the record, John specifically told Larrin in the previous scene that he was not asking her out to dinner.

[escriveine]

Panic Attacks, in 3 Acts (Act I)

Content Warning: explicit discussion of panic attacks and related anxiety disorder NB: There will be 3 acts because that’s the number of different kinds of panic attacks I’ve personally experienced. A panic attack is, at its most fundamental, a story.  And what that story is — or may mean — depends almost entirely on your point of view.

Act I: The Invisible Woman

A woman whose only real distinguishing characteristic is very long hair tied back in a ponytail is walking through a grocery store.  It’s not a terribly busy afternoon, and since this is happening in the before-times, before the plague, no one’s masked or taking notice of how close they are to each other. Nobody’s bumping into anyone else, but there’s plenty of background chatter set to weird electronic instrumental covers of eighties hair band songs. A doubled-handled mesh basket is hanging from her left arm as she slows her pace, winding down like a clockwork toy ekeing out the last motive force from its uncoiling spring. No one notices. Not even the woman. It’s the most boring pantomime show in the entire world. Because for her, everything’s gone completely silent. Her heart’s pounding like a jackhammer, but she can’t hear it. Or her own breathing. Or any of the ambient grocery store noise.  There are only the words spinning noiselessly, blindly through her mind like a Tilt-a-Whirl made of Ferris wheels. For an outside observer somehow privy to her thoughts, this is where it would become an off-kilter comedy. Because the words are: I forgot the list, what’s on the list, I forgot what’s on the list, I forgot the list, around and around, over and over. She’s way past semantic satiation at this point; the words themselves are meaningless, and that outside observer might find it funny if it made an ounce of sense. Distantly, the thought coalesces that it should be funny, but she can’t remember how to laugh, or even shrug it off, this strange loop that keeps spinning endlessly, meaninglessly, terrifyingly on and on.  How can terror be so banal as this, so colorless, so silent, so timeless? Then it ends. No reason. Not for the start, not for the end. Her eyes feel wet, maybe from not blinking for a long time? People are still moving around, moving around her, with a kind of Brownian motion that suggests everything is the same as it ever was.  She’s got darts of quicksilver adrenaline crackling through her limbs like she just had a near-miss with an oncoming car, or train, or something. She starts moving again, in the same general direction as the people meandering by her, picking up a few more items, even though everything seems half-disconnected somewhere along the way between interaction and perception. She successfully navigates the rest of the aisles, the self-checkout line, even the route home. And no one notices.