Anonymous
2am panic attack. inhale. exhale. inhale. Focus on your breathing. Focus on the rising and falling of your chest. Inhale. Count to eight. Exhale. inhale. Why was I even awake? Why did I choose to punish myself by staying up past everyone who talks to me? Why did I force myself to suffer alone when there are so many people who would answer a call from me at this hour? exhale. I hated this feeling. This feeling of warm sadness that clouded my heart and settled in the pits of my stomach making me curl into a ball. I hated the loss of feeling in my fingers and toes from lack of breath. inhale. The phantom feeling of his arms scooping me against his chest only made my breaths faster. The way I could hear his voice in my ear, saying that everything would be ok. It wouldn’t. This only caused my tears to fall faster. exhale. I knew I could do it. That wasn’t the problem. I knew
8
in a couple moments I would be able to crawl into my bed and read until I fell asleep. The problem: I didn’t want to. I was tired of the daunting feeling that no one truly cared as much as I wished they would. Tired of the feeling that if I didn’t write first or make plans, people wouldn’t talk to me. Tired of the feeling that I wasn’t enough. inhale. I watched my phone carefully from across the room, it didn’t have any unanswered messages. Everyone who talked to me had gone to bed four hours ago. I was alone. I’d text someone after I had calmed down to apologize, for what I didn’t know. My gut was telling me I had messed up somehow. Perhaps, I was simply apologizing for losing my breath, for prolonging the anxiety by not just gaining enough courage to call someone for help. exhale. I pulled my beanie down over my ears trapping my headphones. It didn’t matter that no one was going to see me like this, that the one person who had was gone. I didn’t want to look like this, I didn’t want to look how I felt. I roughly rubbed the spot under my eye where makeup was smudged. This only irritated my eyes and soon my hands were rubbing the gap in my collarbone. inhale. I should’ve listened to everyone and gone to bed. I should’ve showered before midnight and been asleep