The race between me... and panic

Colon, parentheses.

What do I mean?

What do I feel?

It feels like my inner body rattles, and I’m unsure if it's real. Im unsure if my actual body is rattling, can people see me shaking? My friend sits next to me as I desperately suck crisp cold night air into my lungs, hoping that every breath forces greater space between me and the lingering panic attack. Can they feel my body rattling as they sit by my side?

It feels like an uncertain line between feeling like you want or need to puke at any given second. That every expansion and compression of your rib cage could push you over that edge and force the vomit of your life from its deepest hiding spots. I imagine the media portrayal of an exorcism. That the suffering person violently vomits the dark pain inhabiting and hijacking their body. The urge to vomit feels like maybe, just maybe, this could rid my body from this trespassing pain that boils within, just like the exorcism scenes that haunt me. Maybe it’s an exorcism from my own emotions.

It feels like every surface area of my body is taken over with raised goose-bumps. That every fine hair stands up as if they too are trying to reach far away, in attempt to put more space between the darkness that lingers. It’s the chills, the skin that never warms while my insides boil. It’s my body’s attempt to regulate that sends an uncontrollable shiver that rolls down from my scalp to my toes.

It’s the feeling of watching your world balance on a needle, so thin and so sharp. The fear of even breathing too hard and sending the world toppling over or pushing enough pressure that the needle breaks the surface and leaves the seams ripped to shreds. What do you do? Hold your breath and try to exist in upmost stillness in a swirling universe? Can the universe see that I am moving through life, in conversations held by other people or my own mouth looking into their eyes but lost to watching my world on a needle?

I feel like a middle-school volcano science project. Carrying baking soda on one end of my body and vinegar on the other end, and consciously keeping them apart, but am constantly being given more and more of one, or the other, or both. It feels like the rattling is my body’s volcano rumbling in anticipation, that the urge to puke is the burning lava moving to the light of the universe in hopes of escaping.

It’s the feeling of holding water balloons balanced in your hands wearing gloves imbedded with thorns. That with enough stillness the water is contained, but with any sudden jostle one single punctures, and the water explodes. My eyes fight the balance of holding back the gates of tears, filling up so much demanding release, and they inevitably do release. At any given second the tears can well up behind my blinking wall of eyelashes, so routine that with enough control they are blinked back behind the gate.

It’s the dizzying of my head. The weight of my head feeling like the wobbling car sales balloon people, but too top heavy filled with cement while my brain is on an agitator from a washing machine. Sometimes I wonder if you can see my vision agitating from side to side when you look in my eyes.

It’s the hollow breaths of exhaustion when I finally win the battle, the race of the panic. If I lose, the panic catches up, speeds by grabbing me and drags me along having stolen my breath. It’s the sunken-ness of my eyes, the transition of the makings of my face. The corner of my eyes feels like they are dragged down in a frown, deep pockets pulling my view of the universe into sunken pits. I imagine my face being drawn by Tim Burton.

It’s my body feeling frozen in stillness, but my insides feel like the sloshing water falling over the side of the pool after hundreds of beings of emotions crash into the water and sprint in circles, until they stop completely. The emotions held still in time, but the water carries the momentum and violently spills over until enough has dumped out and eventually the water too stills.

It’s hard to identify the colors of emotion when your vision is spinning on the UFO ride at the state fair. Each turn faster and faster, the colors just blur together. I feel fear, sadness, empathy, anger, anxiety, longing, and exhaustion. They blur and boil becoming one giant tsunami wave of colors. I watch on the shore gulping in as much air as I can in anticipation and preparation of the inevitable crash.

What do I mean?

What do I feel?

:)