An ode to Artax, the horse from The Neverending Story

or, How To Talk About Panic Attacks

I remember you a beautiful and brilliant white,
shining as you sprinted toward the horizon.
I was eight years old when I sat in front of the television
and watched Bastian, a kid as old as I was, sit in his school’s attic,
open a book he wasn’t supposed to take
and read about how you and Atreyu, your young rider,
set out across Fantasia
to save your world from The Nothing, a malevolent force
intent on consuming everything in its path.

Early in your journey, the two of you entered the Swamps of Sadness,
a seemingly endless landscape of black, muddy water.
“Everyone knew,” Bastian read aloud, “that whoever let the sadness
overtake him would sink into the swamp.”
Atreyu dutifully stomped through the muck,
but at some point, you stopped.
Atreyu tugged once your reins once. Twice.
You didn’t move.
Then, you began to sink.

Your young rider rushed to your side
and begged you to free yourself.
“Fight against the sadness, Artax,” Atreyu said.
Instead, you turned your head away from him and sank lower.
Atreyu screamed and pleaded.
He changed position to pull harder, now up to his shoulders in the swamp.
Tears fell down Atreyu’s cheeks. Down Bastian’s cheeks.
Down mine.
Atreyu pulled at your reins, but you didn’t move.
“Artax,” he said, “please! You're letting the sadness of the swamps get to you!”

I remember the white crescents of your desperate, bulging eyes.
I remember how your head leaned forward
and how the top row of your teeth was revealed as Atreyu
pulled frantically on your reins.
I remember how the dark water crested your saddle
and almost flooded your mouth.
I remember the dark water opening wide and swallowing you whole.

*

Thanks to assorted movies and TV shows I watched growing up,
I thought panic attacks
were the stuff of nervous men, typically scrawny or timid or unpopular—
or all three—usually all three—
hyperventilating and breathing into a brown paper bag.
Which they then popped for some reason.

I was never sure of the process—only that panic attacks were
for people who didn’t know how to handle their feelings—
who weren’t strong enough or smart enough
to handle their emotions and keep them in their places.

My body is a house of big feelings,
and sometimes, that leads to panic attacks.

Sometimes, I feel like my body is too weak and too tiny
to contain my over-grown, over-sized emotions.
Or sometimes, I tell myself
I’m feeling the wrong emotion at the wrong time.
Sometimes, I don’t feel like
my body’s good enough or strong enough or right-sized enough.
Sometimes, I don’t feel like
my body does what I tell it to do; what I believe it should do
in order for it—and me—to be loved.
Sometimes, I’m ashamed of my body
and choose to believe my body has betrayed me
or let me down in some irreparable, unforgivable way.

In these moments of disappointment or anger or loathing,
I want to dissociate, or leave, my body.

But I can’t. My body is, after all, mine.
And this inability to leave,
of feeling trapped,
this produces a flood of emotions,
which in turn produces the panic attack.

Now, maybe you’re reading this, Artax, and thinking,
That’s great, Dom. Thank you for sharing.
I’m really glad you’re able to walk me through this part of your life.
But what the hell does any of this have to do with me?

I’m so glad you asked.

Because at this point, unlike the movie-and-TV-version of a panic attack,
things don’t speed up for me.
Neither my breath nor my heart rate quickens.
Instead, time slows down. My body grows leaden.
My shoulders droop. My head falls. I drag my feet.

I let the sadness get to me.

Jenae, my partner, witnesses my body wilt as we sit
at the dining room table.
She moves her chair next to mine and leans forward so
our foreheads touch.

“Where are you?” She asks.
“Can you tell me what you’re thinking? What you’re feeling?”

Sometimes, I don’t say anything.
In the moment, I don’t know how to tell her
I feel too far from her, as if the real me
has shrunken down to the size of a thimble,
and she’s left with this sad, lumbering shell that looks like a person,
but isn’t.

Or sometimes, I don’t say anything
because I don’t know how to tell her
that sadness occasionally feels like a relief.
I don’t know how to communicate
how pleasant it is to feel one massive thing—even if it’s sadness—
as opposed to a million chaotic feelings.

Sometimes, sadness feels like a hungry blanket.
It soothes and comforts and protects and also consumes.

Jenae calls out from the present.
She encourages me to name things in the room.
She asks me to mirror her breathing.
She hands me a glass of cold water; tells me to drink.

“Can you tell me where you are?” She asks.
“Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

Sometimes, Artax, in these moments that feel like swaddling or drowning—
or both, sometimes it feels like both—
I think of you.
I think of how everything slowed down for you in that swamp and
how sadness grew big and tall in your heart
and disappeared you into its deep.

Sometimes, Artax, the thought of disappearing feels more comforting
than fighting my way back up to the surface.
Sometimes, I wonder if you felt as sad in the swamps
as I occasionally do in my life.

In your story, Bastian brought you back to life
thanks to the power of imagination.
I’d forgotten this part, but
thanks to the power of Wikipedia,
I recalled the image of you and Ateyu
gleefully galloping across Fantasia’s re-imagined landscape.

I’m sure I loved this as a child,
but as an adult, this read as a cop-out.
Artax shouldn’t come back to life, I thought.
Artax should stay dead. Bad things happen,
and sometimes nothing can be done to fix them.

And that’s true. Sometimes, nothing can be done
to fix a bad thing.
But sometimes, something else happens.

Sometimes, someone inserts themselves into the bad thing.
Sometimes, someone comes alongside you in the sadness.
Sometimes, someone calls your name and loves you back to life.

“Can you tell me where you are?”
“Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

*

Sometimes, I let the sadness get to me.
And sometimes, Jenae sits with me until I feel safe to speak.

Sometimes, I want to dissociate from myself.
And sometimes, Jenae holds me and hugs me and refuses to let me go.

Sometimes, Artax, I want to disappear,
and sometimes, Jenae calls my name and tells me she loves me.

Sometimes, she calls my name and tells me she loves me.
Sometimes, she calls my name and tells me she loves me.
Sometimes, I remember the sound of my own name.
And I come back.

---

Illustration by @just_francesca