My hands are consistently.
so many pieces of wood.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
anyway, what the hell is a panic attack?
So it happened that I had a panic attack last night. The first full blown one in several years.
Sitting at Bentley’s and the room gradually fills with bodies. The sounds of bodies and their individual coffee cups. The sounds of merriment. A seemingly invisible collision of worlds.
This happens all the time, of course. People come together in public places and do what people coming together do. I have been a person before. I remember it in the way you remember something that happened in your presence. Something you may have witnessed but ultimately, it didn’t happen to you.
We were sitting there, it was amazing. She had on a black shirt, I think. Or maybe it was blue. Either way I don’t remember being afraid of her. I was alive then, I didn’t worry about it. I knew we were people in a world full of people. It never occurred to me to have my eye on the door.
The ugliest part of a panic attack is complicity. The way the world becomes a table top lifted from one corner and the plates slide. People who were eating salmon now bite into chocolate cake as if that’s what they ordered. No one whispers to their neighbor when a plate or two makes it to the floor.
Today I feel as though I am broken.
I feel like a road that folks will continue to drive down. I wonder where this goes, they will say in their wandering. And, oh, what a beautiful view. The patches seem seamless. Really, they’re nothing more than pieces of non-reflective glass.
Sitting at Bentley’s and the room gradually fills with bodies. The sounds of bodies and their individual coffee cups. The sounds of merriment. A seemingly invisible collision of worlds.
This happens all the time, of course. People come together in public places and do what people coming together do. I have been a person before. I remember it in the way you remember something that happened in your presence. Something you may have witnessed but ultimately, it didn’t happen to you.
We were sitting there, it was amazing. She had on a black shirt, I think. Or maybe it was blue. Either way I don’t remember being afraid of her. I was alive then, I didn’t worry about it. I knew we were people in a world full of people. It never occurred to me to have my eye on the door.
The ugliest part of a panic attack is complicity. The way the world becomes a table top lifted from one corner and the plates slide. People who were eating salmon now bite into chocolate cake as if that’s what they ordered. No one whispers to their neighbor when a plate or two makes it to the floor.
Today I feel as though I am broken.
I feel like a road that folks will continue to drive down. I wonder where this goes, they will say in their wandering. And, oh, what a beautiful view. The patches seem seamless. Really, they’re nothing more than pieces of non-reflective glass.
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