I want to make a baby, and I don’t want Baby swimming in SSRI soup.

The mall wasn’t open yet and the door was still locked. Laughing, I realized that I’d never had this problem before. I’m never early for anything.

Tell us how you overcame anxiety this week, even if only for one fleeting moment.

“If you don’t like Celexa, you don’t have to continue taking it,” my doctor said. Yeah, I thought. I’ve heard that story before.

“I think you’d feel much better if you tried some medication other than Xanax,” he said. His concern was genuine. “Instead of treating your panic as it happens, we should try to prevent it.”

As I grumbled through redundant tasks (like adding and naming worksheets and copying and pasting cells into over 300 Excel files — seriously!), I found time to ask myself a bothersome question: why am I here?

All I wanted to do was drink my coffee and eat my grilled cheese and then call it a night. The pressure to participate in the upkeep of friendship was too exhausting to even consider. Why bother?

(If you missed the first three parts of this story, click here, then here , and then here.)

The scene: a small road off of a two-lane state highway in the woods. The cell phone coverage: first none, then a single bar. My panic state: full blown.

I was laying down in my car, following the EMT-in-training’s instructions to avoid sitting up or moving around, and I was scared nearly to death. I shook, I gasped for air, and I palpitated.

I hated every single second that slowly and dreadfully crawled by. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even conjure up the energy or the clarity of mind to reach for my Ten Rules for Coping With Panic worksheet that lives in my wallet. I was in the middle of nowhere, I was stuck, and I couldn’t escape without help. Not only was I about to receive medical help, but I’d had to call my husband and ask him to drive 40 miles to be with me.

Ugh. Failure.

The word kept repeating in my head: failure failure failure.

As I stood in the Walmart parking lot, a smothering feeling of unreality clouded my mind. Thoughts raced through my head: what is going on? Am I going crazy? Am I dying? Is this a nightmare?

I wanted to re-frame a breakdown into a breakthrough.