“Panic Drapes the Look of the World: Literary Treatment for Anxiety in an Uncertain Age” by Emily Sinclair (fiction, ’14)

1.
June, 2016:

I was having a panic attack while I walked the dog after dinner. Children rode skateboards and scooters in that last yellowed hour before bedtime. I felt unreal to myself, and the Denver streets I’d known my whole adult life seemed false and imitative. What I felt was a numbing and a derealization that left me somewhat incapable of speaking to other people, as if I were vocally paralyzed, as if some essential fluid in my body had evaporated. It was hard to believe that people lived in the houses we passed; instead, the houses seemed part of an elaborate ruse of which I had not been informed. When we encountered other dogs, my dog, who was eight pounds, and at ten years old somewhat arthritic and embittered, lunged and snarled at them, then attempted to bite their chins. [. . . continue reading here.]