you will discover the ER at three o’clock in the morning is not full of blood and gore but women in their twenties having panic attacks. There is a particular, feminine shame in the act of crying “I’m dying” when nothing is actually wrong. Panic attacks serve as confirmation of the very things women spend their lives working to negate: suspicions of female silliness, stupidity, hysteria. Panic attacks involve the removal of the mind’s control over the body, and in this way are
