Panic: Zalfie

Crowds

||Zoe||

There are people everywhere. Being in London always brought up my anxiety and a big crowd of people ontop of that? This is bad.

I glance over at Alfie, who's eyes are pinned ahead, looking for the quickest way out.

My boyfriend was fine with crowds, he's just looking for the best way to get me away from the people. Im so grateful for his help, but As I go to voice my thanks a ringing begins in my ears- telling me my anxious behavior is about to get a whole lot worse.

I latch into his wrist in the hope that skin-to-skin contact will be enough to calm me down, but his warm skin just adds to the things weighing me down.

Its hot: insanely hot. I pull my hand away giving him a sympathetic look.

He's too good for me. The thought of him having to deal with me just adds to the stress making it even more difficult to breathe.

It's hard to explain a panic attack because everyone's different. For me It starts with chest pain. It feels like heartburn and then my head starts pounding and I feel lightheaded.

A ringing starts in my ears and I feel nauseous. Every sound is duplicated making trying to focus pretty much impossible.

I get cold: but then hot and then cold again and so on and so forth.

It's a terrifying feeling especially at first. It's like having a heart attack and feeling like you're about to pass out or vomit everywhere at the same time.
Breathing doesn't help, if anything it makes it worse.

The more I try to breathe calmly the more jagged my breathing becomes. It's petrifying when there's no way out of the situation and you can't calm down.

If you explain to someone they'll tell you just to get over it but you can't. You can't just 'get over it' and that's probably the worst part.

Afterwards I get a pounding headache and feel really out of place and weird.
Panic attacks make me question reality more than normal, having them in public is embarrassing ontop of terrifying.

Alfie can tell I'm about to crack because after a glance towards me he forces the crowd to break for him, pulling me along until we're safe and out of the disasterous pool of humans but it's just another day.

A/N:
Hi! I Apologize in advance if this was bad. It's really hard to write about something so personal but I feel like people should really know more about how serious social anxiety is and how it effects people in everyday life. If you liked this chapter could you vote? Or heart it or whatever? I'd appreciate it so much.
-
Bree