Slow-Motion

Everything is lagging.

I turn my head. In slow-motion, it blurs across the screen. My cat dashes through the room;

you see: cat, empty space, cat;

you hear: some kind of loud noise, like thundering hooves,

then silence.

This is your brain on

drugs

dial-up.

This is what becomes of the real world when you have been living at a 16,043 latency for hours. Suddenly, you’re dead and wondering if maybe you lag-kited one of those crazy dragons into your living room.

Curled up in an over-sized chair, laptop balanced on my knee, I blink.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s snowing?’” I think, staring at a friend’s message. “Didn’t it just do that? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it just did that.”

I shake my head and return to trying to get across Honor Hold.

“Gryphon master…so…close…” Disconnect. “NOOOO!” I have been attempting this journey for ten minutes.

“I’m just trying to get back to an AH!” I type furiously to another friend. The text doesn’t even appear on my screen before -

Disconnect.

When I log back on, my buddy is still standing by the inn mailbox. He waves at me. I start to type a “c’ya when I have a better connection” -

Disconnect.

DENIED!! You have attempted an unauthorized disconnect! Die, bitch, die!

…

The power goes out.

My mother walks in and says, “It’s snowing.”

 

Aw, fuck it.

I glance at the clock: quarter to nine. Okay.

I pick up my cellphone and turn it on: 8:45.

…

Shit.

The difference between traditional clock hands and the blaring pixeled digitalness is obvious – one seems safe, the other doesn’t. Why? Because I told myself that I would leave at “8:45″. That’s in numbers. I didn’t think, “quarter to nine,” which is how I read clocks. Nope. For six hours of subconscious awareness, “8:45″ was branded into my eyes and ears and thoughts.

I pause to wonder if I can make it to class on time. My cellphone now reads “8:46″. I’m still in my pajamas.

“Aw, fuck it,” I mutter and toss the phone back into my purse.

It isn’t that I’m lazy. Nor is it that I’m unenthusiastic about the subject. It’s because I received an e-mail from the instructor last night:

“Hi Everyone,
The discussion is going very well. Your posts are thoughtful and reflect content from the book and additional sources. “

Eh? …EH??

I log on to the class forum and find a week of work and discussions, as well as a grade scale based on that week. My stomach turns. I have an ‘F’ and no way of making it up.

See, I have been checking the forum off and on for two weeks, making absolutely positive that I wouldn’t be caught off-guard, but I was on the road all Sunday and have been sick since Monday. And in those four days, the entire class has discussed half of the first assigned book. A book I haven’t even been able to purchase yet.

I blink at the screen. My eyes kind of burn.

I stand up and pace back and forth within two square feet. It’s more like just turning in circles. I begin to hyperventilate. “No!” I think, “No no no NO! You can’t have a panic attack! It isn’t that bad, you fucking moron! NO!” I regulate my breathing and sit down again. Phew.

I am afraid of having panic attacks, almost as much as I am afraid during them. Panic attacks are a complete loss of control. For me, everything moves in slow motion because I am moving so fast. My vision becomes blurry, wavy, and walls close in. My body becomes numb and warm and I can’t feel anything I try to grab onto. I can’t breathe; I gasp for breath. I try to talk or call out, but I can’t even feel the words in my chest. One thought cycles through my mind: “I am going to die.”

There is nothing quite like the conflict of believing you are going to die but knowing that you will not. I use the term “believing” instead of “thinking” or “feeling” because it is a belief. There is nothing more true to you at that moment. But, logically, you know that a panic attack will not kill you. This is where the terror sets in. Think of a nightmare in which you fend off invisible monsters. Imagine fighting for your life against air. The struggle is futile: there is nothing to defeat.

Facing ordinary stresses such as 15 minutes to get ready and run across campus, only to enter class (failing or not) late, would be like injecting mercury into my bloodstream. Usually, I force myself to charge head-on, but I don’t plan to stay here anyway, right?

I sit down and play WoW for a few hours.

 

A Cozy Tavern

I am playing World of Warcraft. This means, of course, that I have no idea what is going on around me. Because when I am playing a game there is no “around me.” You could shoot me in the chest and I wouldn’t even flinch.

“It’s stopped popping,” Kalissa’s voice echoes somewhere from the abyss. “We should probably take the bag out now…”

“Uh…uh…huh? Yeah. Okay.” I glance at her without registering the motion.

I’m sitting on the ground, leaning against the mini-fridge. The microwave is right above my head and I am “keeping an eye on it.” You ask, which eye? The one that cares more about popcorn than Warcraft… Hahaha…ha.

Trying to open the bag, Kalissa rips it wide open, spilling burnt popcorn all over the floor.

“Smooooooooth,” I laugh and look back at my game.

…

My head snaps back up. “Is…that…going to set off the smoke detector?” She looks up in horror at the smoke detector three feet above her head. She stumbles away from it.

Phew, I think, we’re-BLEEEPBLEEPBLEEEEEEEEEP!

Not again. Oh God. Not again. PLEASE.

I clutch my hands to my ears. My first thought is, ‘Is my character on Warcraft stopped in a safe place?’ I pause.

I care more about Aoisa’s safety than my own.

My mind returns to the present crisis as I envision the building being evacuated. I envision the irritation, the questions, and the confession. This has to be a felony, this burning of popcorn in a crowded college dorm. My thoughts race.
Others on the third floor are beginning to emerge from their rooms to investigate. There is no evacuation, but they give me a scare. The story travels throughout the entire building in a few minutes. As I run around, trying to find an R.A., strangers laugh with me. “Burn some popcorn?” they joke. “Haha, yeah,” I reply and keep running. The conversations are all the same. And there are half a dozen of them.

I find an R.A., but he tells me that…well, they’re too frikin busy right now and we’re just going to have to wait it out.

Ehem. Okay.

I deliver the bad news to Kalissa and Tony. We hear the sirens coming up the road. We retreat down the hall, away from the noise. The noise stops. We return to the room and hastily clean up the popcorn on the floor, only to discover that much stepping upon has occurred. We’re partially deaf now, but there is a new noise…

“Is that…did I… Ha! I left the sound on,” I laugh as I turn my laptop around and see my character AFK-ing in the middle of a cozy tavern.

Two seconds later, there is a knock on the door. “Fire department,” says a deep, husky voice that knows it’s just popcorn.

The firefighter and a policeman make a quick investigation: they take a few steps, try to open the windows further but fail, and accept our profuse apologies. They leave.
“I was going to abandon you guys,” I tell Kalissa and Tony, “if we evacuated.”

“Yeah, we don’t blame you.”