It’s one of those times where you feel like you’re drowning. But you know you’re not. There’s air all around you--you just can’t breathe, and as the people around talk--the teacher, your fellow students--the sound is muffled, like it’s coming through water. Your heart’s beating too fast and you feel like it’s about to burst from your ribcage as memories--some real and others a product of your F@#*ed up imagination--rush through your head, and make your vision blurry around the edges. The walls are too close. The people are too close. Everything is just too close! You have to get out, you have to get away. But where are you going to go?
Then come the stares and the whispers, and the “are you okay?”s and “what’s going on?”s. Because by now it’s obvious that you’re panicking. But nobody knows why. Nobody knows what’s going on in your head. Not even you. Because everything is going to fast. And you can’t stop it. No matter how hard you try.
And the panic attack just keeps going on until you feel like you’re going to go crazy, or maybe just pass out. Until you snap, and you run out of the classroom and down to the bus stop. But there’s nowhere to go, and you’re out of breath, and your face is red and sweaty. And even though it’s a hot day, you feel cold as you sink down, lean against a building support, and try to get your breathing under control. To slow your heartbeat. Anything!
And still all you have are the voices screaming at you inside your own head, and the images, the memories. The ways people could hurt you. The ways people have hurt you. The ways you’ve hurt yourself..
At these thoughts your fingernails dig into your arm, leaving behind long red scratches, which burn and itch. And you know they’re going to scar, but you can’t bring yourself to care, because as you feel the pain in your arm, the panic attack subsides. Ever. So. Slowly. And by the time the bell rings for the end of the day, you can think better, though your breathing is still shaky and your heart is still beating too fast.
But on the bus ride home, you’re silent. And you don’t answer your best friend, when she asks if you want to hang out. Or the girl you’ve liked for months, when she asks if you’re okay. And when you get off at your stop, you run home as fast as you can, not even caring that you fall over twice, or that your hands and knees now match the mess that is your arm.
Then you open the door, and it’s like the bubble of fear around you pops and suddenly everything comes into sharper relief, and you can hear, and smell, and BREATHE. And it doesn’t matter that your arms are bleeding, or that you probably look like some sort of wild child with your hair tangled, and lines of mascara and eyeliner down your face from tears you’d only just now realized were there. Because you’re home now. And you’re alone. And you’re safe, from everybody but yourself.
I had to write some sort of short story for my English class last year, and this is what happened. It's kind of personal and messed up, but it is what it is.
