A Sudden and Horrible Beginning – The Deli Disaster

Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. (Job 4:14)

It happened with a bang! Anxiety disorder and social phobia, like a wolf spider, pounced onto my life one fall weekend morning as I sat in front of a breakfast of scrambled eggs and hash browns. I was sixteen years old and had taken my very first job. I was a waitress at a deli in my hometown, and on this day, as usual, I started work at 6 a.m. After hours of serving customers in that crowded little dining room, I felt exhausted, stressed, and famished. I had the shakes. Feeling drained, I told the owner, the woman who was doing the cooking, that I just had to sit down and eat something. That’s when a kind of haze came over me. Was I feeling faint? I sat at the counter with the old men, the regulars, who sat and drank their cups of coffee. I felt somewhat anxious, and my surroundings seemed somehow distant. In front of me was my breakfast, which I was sure would make me feel calm and confident enough to continue my waitress tasks. Yet just as I lifted my first forkful of eggs, my entire upper body froze! I was baffled and frightened! I forced the fork upward, and as I did, it felt as though my trembling arm was going into convulsions. My neck muscles were so tight that my head shook, turning my world into a blur! Panic swept in! My heart pounded! I gasped for breath! I quivered all over, yet sat frozen to my seat! My rotatable stool suddenly felt like a towering pinnacle on which I was perched. I was sure the regulars at the counter had put down their coffee cups to stare at me. In my surreal state of sheer panic, fork and eggs shaking out of control, I thought, “PLEASE! Don’t go insane!” My utter confusion caused me even more terror. This must be a dream! As I tried to shove reality from my mind, I glanced down at my scrambled eggs. They glared back at me. In horror I realized that I had to do it again! I had to lift another portion on my fork to my mouth! I couldn’t conceive of being able to achieve that. Again frozen, with my hand shaking out of control, my goal became to finish the agonizing task of eating the eggs before I was forced to bolt out of the deli, screaming and knocking over tables and chairs on the way! As days went by, I developed an intense and irrational fear of working in that deli. I did not want to be there – now a matter of sheer fear more than anything else. Each evening after work I would cry over the day’s anxieties and beg God for deliverance. Being a waitress was a stage performance in which I had terrible stage fright. One morning, a friendly couple ordered coffee. As I made my way to their table carrying a cup of coffee in each hand, panic began to grow. I was sure that all eyes were on me, and I felt like as though I was walking a tightrope between two very tall buildings. My body tried to freeze as I forced it forward in jerks. If only I could grab something so I wouldn’t fall! I was vulnerable, out in the vast open area with nothing to hold me up. The closer I came to the table, the more panicky and shaky I felt. Finally, as I lowered the cups to the table, I watched in horror as my hands convulsed out of control. Steaming coffee splattered and spread across the table and onto the couple’s laps. The worst had come to pass! With horror-stricken choking I apologized to the patient pair and asked another young waitress to clean up the table. Before she could ask why, I made a frantic escape to the restroom. At that point there was no way I could return to the floor. In the tiny restroom, I shook, my heart pounding, my breathing out of control. I wanted never to come out of there. It was like being in the middle of a gripping nightmare. Since that awful day at the deli, my teen years were filled with panic episodes whenever I was doing most anything in the presence of others: from eating in the high school cafeteria, to typing, to simply reaching out my hand to take something someone was handing me. Panic episodes quickly led to constant looming and gnawing anxiety, as well as feelings of despair and fear of the future. Anxiety disorder became my baggage and followed me throughout my college years and beyond.