Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I was taken to church Thursday evening, for the Christmas Eve sermon. I wasn't terribly thrilled to go, but I figured I'd be fine suffering through an hour of it.
But when we walked through the doors, my chest felt tight, and I tried to shove the feeling of dread down.
I hadn't been in that church in a long time, and besides a few things being moved around, it hadn't changed at all.
I hate that church, and the school that's attached to it, I went through 8 awful years there and I never thought I'd be going back, let alone for some Christmas sermon.
The feeling in my chest got tighter, harder to ignore, and I realized with shock I was starting to have a panic attack. I tried, I ******** tried to ignore the feeling of fear, tried to keep my breathing normal, tried to stop the damn tears from falling down my face as the minister said his greetings and bid us to rise and welcome others, and then stay standing for the opening song. I lasted seven minutes, that's two songs and a cheesy welcome from both the ministers. I only lasted for seven minutes. I bolted during the second song, it was too loud. The place felt too crowded, too hot. I couldn't take it anymore, so I left.
I hid my face behind my hand as I walked down the aisle and out the door. I held it together long enough to get to one of the bathrooms in the school section of the building, that made it farther from the chapel then most people would bother walking, I wanted to be alone.
I don't know how long I sat there, on the floor with my arms around my chest, hyperventilating and bawling my eyes out. It must have been a while, because I never made it back to the sermon.
My sides started to hurt, and to be honest I was scaring myself a little, I had never had a panic attack that being by myself didn't cure. Walking away and hiding usually made fast work of getting rid of it, but there I was, sitting in the all too bright fluorescent room, reading the posters about poems and simple math (put up for the third and fourth graders I'm guessing, since fifth through eighth graders are all upstairs) as I struggled to breath normally.
Eventually I ran outside, I remembered that sometimes being outside helped.
It was cold. Really cold, we didn't have any snow, but it was really cold. And it didn't help. I couldn't see the stars, I was cold, my sides still hurt from hyperventilating, and I felt helpless.
I walked around the school, the doors I ran out of were locked, and the only open ones were at the front entrance and the chapel entrance. I had planned on entering back in through the chapel, that door was farther away and I was still holding out hope that being outside would help. But someone was smoking, and I didn't want to be questioned. I thank God (heh, ironic) that the school never locked their main entrance doors when church was in service, and I entered through those instead.
I calmed down for maybe a nano second, the warmth helped, but then it started back up again. I started walking towards the reception area into the chapel, intending on waiting near there, when this little boy ran down the hallway.
I hid, yes I hid, behind one of the fire doors as his father ran after him and started walking along the hallway, hoping that he wouldn't hear me hyperventilating or turn around and see me. I walked quickly through the hallway, turned and sat down at a table in the old lunch room, listening to some old people play scrabble as the sermon droned on. It opened into the chapel reception area. I sat there for a few minutes, still hyperventilating, still crying, and bolted out the chapel doors, subjecting myself to the cold outside air again. I hid behind a tree this time, and I managed to calm down fractionally. I stopped crying at least, and I was able to force myself to take some deep breaths to ease the ache in my sides.
I went back inside, grabbed my jacket, looped around the chapel area and then sat down on a small bench that was in the chapel reception area, but also right next to a door. It was still too loud, and I was being stared at.
This elderly lady was staring at me the whole time I sat there, and when her husband returned from his ushering duties, he stared as well. And soon another usher was staring at me, all three of them. I had to leave two more times, when my crying blinded me or when my hyperventilating seemed too loud I would run out the nearby door, and wait in the cold. I was grateful that the school had trees everywhere, it was comforting turning my back on the school with a tree to lean against. It gave me a sense of security.
Each time though, I would eventually have to force myself back inside, I didn't want my parents freaking out that I was completely gone, if they even would bother worrying.
I had warned my dad, a little jokingly, that I might have a panic attack.
It's unnerving, being stared at by strangers in a church, a little ironic as well.
In a church that preaches about helping others, people just stare at a broken, hyperventilating girl, and that's it. They just stare, and stare, and stare, and it's maddening. They blatantly stare at you, they don't even flinch when you gaze back at them, with tears running down your face as you clutch your sides that ache and fight back the sobs that threaten to escape each time you part your lips to try and take a deep breath in order the calm your breathing.
And it's heart wrenching, when those who work for the church, spend every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday there, believing in God and in what they do, and all they do is sit and stare at someone's pain.
Just.
Stare.

When the sermon ended I ran to my father, one of my little sisters saw me first, and she hugged me. I almost couldn't let her go, she had noticed I was gone, she asked me what was wrong, and I just hugged her as I stared at the floor, unable to meet anyone's eyes. When I finally let her go, my father put his arm around my shoulder and led me over to the jacket area, I was the only ready to go. After he put his jacket on he held me while I started to break down all over again, and eventually my mom just told him to take me back to my grandparents, they lived right across the street from the church.
My breathing was terrible the whole way back, my sides were starting to burn and the ache was getting unbearable.
When we did get back we stayed outside, and I bawled my eyes out as he hugged me and told me to take deep breaths, over and over again.
And even though I didn't want to be touched, I was so grateful someone was trying to help. I hated and loved it.

When we went to my grandparents for Christmas on Thursday, I stayed quiet about it, no one was asking me about it and I wasn't going to offer up any information.

But after a while, when all the presents were unwrapped and everyone was off doing their own thing, I wondered upstairs.

I don't know how or why, but my dad and I were discussing Wednesday night in my Grandma's all-too-small kitchen

And as we were talking, the conversation close to ending, my Grandma happened to overhear us. She questioned me, and while I tried to drop the topic, she persisted.
I told her I had had a panic attack at church and she asked why.
"Because it was too loud, too crowded, and too hot." I regretted saying anything, because I saw her defenses go up and my heart sank, she was choosing the church over me.
"It was barely crowded!" And she made a fair point, it wasn't very crowded, but it was still too full.
I felt trapped in that small space, with the only exits at my back. And regardless of anything, even if it had been dead empty, it was the noise that was the worst.
My grandma had a look on her face, doubt, anger, "cat-caught-mouse", all of the emotions that told me everything I needed to know. She didn't, and wouldn't, believe me. She thought I was lying, bad mouthing her beloved church just to spite her, to make others hate it for "no good reason" just as much as I did, because I was a liar. She looked at me as I'm sure she looked at my biological father. She dislikes that man, and in that moment, I was right up there with him.
I don't remember if I said anything, I was too caught up in assessing how I felt about how she was looking at me, too busy rolling my eyes in an attempt to hide the pain I felt from being called a liar, and for being on my own, because my dad didn't stand up for me.
"Well I guess we'll have to go to church more often then." She said to me, that look still on her face.
I got angry. I had to fight myself from doing something irrational, I wanted to shout at her, to berate both her and my father, I wanted to go downstairs and punch a wall, or slam my fist on the counter, I wanted to walk outside and slam the door shut behind me and walk home, I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor, to become immobile and mute.
It took so much to fight all these feelings, to not do any of them, to just stand there as she looked at me with that damned look of doubt, pride in herself at defending a building, assuming I was just lying for attention.
It took so much.

And I wish she hadn't overheard anything.
Because the shock and the pain I felt from hearing her say those things and watching her look at me like that, it was heart breaking.
She chose a building over me, and she always will.

It took so much. So, so much.









**2015 EDIT**
I recently mentioned taking Sundays off at work to have day to fully dedicate to family and homework.
My grandma instantly retorted that if I took Sunday off I could expect to be heading to church every Sunday from then on.
Right in front of a friend of mine who didn't know what had happened.
How she reacted was inappropriate given the company we had and I can't say I'm too fond of her for that.
I love the woman.
But seriously.