i’ve spent more time than not oscillating between ambivalence and hatred toward my body so accepting it as my home was only a recent decision. it doesn’t need a physical descriptor; it’s not good or bad. it just is (and more). it’s made sharing my body with others easier. fucking a stranger in the backseat of a honda is easier than admitting to a friend that i need help.

making friends has never been easy for me. i’ve got daddy issues. who doesn’t? and my family’s a mess. who’s family isn’t? nonetheless, i’ve always been a “i’m gonna be who i be and do what i do” type. i made the drum and the beat and marched to it. it was only when others threw tomatoes at me did i question and doubt myself. i’d welcome anything that resembled kinship. even if brought me unwanted experiences or put downs or questions about my very being — it was better than being alone. my twenties has been a slow and painful reintroduction to my inner child. who i was as a kid is who, at my core, i’ve always been; and i love and honor her thoughts and ideas. i want to keep her from harm always.

as someone who is otherwise introverted and guarded, i expect impermanence with flings and the weather, not friends. although it’s easier for me to maintain friendships if we are in close proximity to one another; keeping them is of the upmost importance to me. i spent time with nancy last weekend. we met working at a coffee shop in new mexico and we both ended up in las vegas. we were in the Bible Belt of the southwest. of course it’s easy to feel seen when not many people act and think as you do. the loneliness i felt living there packed itself in my trunk and journeyed with me. my absence from this city has allowed us both to change; and it’s made community much harder to come by. so i welcomed being invited to nancy’s place. we smoked. we laughed as we always have. we watched our dogs run in the backyard and cackled when teddy chomped on stale bread left for the birds. but like an early morning call from a rooster, all my head could muster was, “not now,” when i felt lacienga coming. you remember lacienga boulevardez from the proud family? that’s what i call my anxiety.

panic attacks are just anxiety about anxiety. anxiety isn’t inherently bad. it just is. lacienga is a frenemy to me as much as she was to penny proud. she comes and goes and spreads wisdom or havoc as she sees fit. i’ve found that if i acknowledge when lacienga’s volatility is unsettling and uncomfortable, it’s easier to avoid getting tangled in the panic cycle. but this time i couldn’t.

panicking brought me back to every moment where my vulnerability cost me. i was standing in a parking lot with a man who loved me too much to carry on our friendship. i’m rolling my eyes at a dm from a man that pretended to be my friend in hopes that i’d fuck him someday. i’m taking a friend projecting their insecurities on me to the chin because that’s what friends do.

before arriving to nancy’s, i feared that she and i hadn’t clicked as i thought and our friendship was conditional to the time and space we were previously in. so when i began to panic, i figured all she’d see was a black woman experiencing the symptoms of her illness as a hazard needing to be swept from her living room. but she didn’t. like a terrible comment amidst a sea of positive feedback, i forgot about the friendships of my childhood that kept me safe. there was chable and destiny and jessica and peggy and kayla and bee. nancy took care of me, just as they had. she honored my body and my feelings in crisis the same way she does when i’m not: with care and respect.

the aftermath of a panic attack leaves me feeling like the best kind of converse: beat and worn. now that mind has slowed to a stroll and the fog has cleared, i recognize that it’s not fair to myself nor my friendships to withhold credit and good faith. believing the worst of myself has cost me so much already. i don’t want to believe in the monstrous versions of people more than who stands before me, too. there is no pretense in clasping a friend’s hand and saying, “you’re safe and i’ve got you,” at their most vulnerable; and i will no longer treat it as such.