PANIC
And suddenly it wells up in me and I’m not sure if it’s the tears down my cheeks or the brick on my chest or the rope around my throat or the vibrations in my mind and hands and jaw and eyes that will ruin me first.
It rushes through me like acid in my blood. And my mind does the words-and-feelings-thing that I can’t stop and can’t bear and can’t fight.
BANG - like a bomb in my heart. And we’re off: Will I die I’m going to die oh god please help me I’m dying I can’t bear it please help me oh god please help me I’ll do anything (and I’m crying and saying it out loud and frightening my love and terrifying myself and despising myself for the weakness and the terror and the powerlessness) if I promise to be good will you stop I’m sorry please don’t punish me I am so sorry so sorry please stop oh god and my breath is all ragged and I can’t see for the crying or hear for the rushing of fear and I can’t move my body in any sensible way and yet I can because I’m outside somehow and I seem to be shrieking and I just know my eyes are darting about like a TERRIFYING LUNATIC and I don’t (I can’t) care about it because I am so very long gone into this now and I just have to wait it out. Except we all know I’m going to die - fall down and hit my head and bleed to death - as alone as I was when I came into this horrible spiteful unkind bewildering world. Or I will do it do it do it jump onto a moving windscreen and ruin so many people's lives. Or I will struggle to breathe and the breath will come raspy and a sentient part of my howling mind will KNOW that it can only get worse - I will watch from the eye of the storm as I die - the ambulance would never come quickly enough and even if it did - appear magically by my side out of thin air - my final punishment would be laughing, mocking, incompetent, sadistic paramedics who deliberately fumble for my life.
Oh god help me.
People are hearing and seeing me and I DON’T CARE but keep my baby out of the way of all this - someone PLEASE help me and make it stop so she doesn’t know I am this person - ridiculous and embarrassing and incapable and not her mother but like a vision of insanity for this (transient) moment.
My heart is a big, sick, floppy hammering thing inside me and I know it’s going to fail me. It might not have done before but I have the certain knowledge - the bright, shining, indisputable knowledge of sheer madness - that this time will be the charm. This time, I am going to die of this. Reassurances are meaningless - my own and those of anyone who witnesses my disintegration.
OK - I’m trying to be sensible now. Trying to effect change with sick rationality: Will someone for GOD’S SAKE please help me. Put me out of my misery. Kill me now. Just stop this feeling. There is too much adrenaline and it will seep out of my pores before long - my skin can’t contain it and my breath must smell a stink of bitter fear.
Shaking so much. Trying to appease something or someone. Ball on the floor or locked in my mind and floating like a dead thing. Tired of this. So tired and so full of dread and despair. Crying like a child without a mother. My heart is breaking for myself and I have no way to comfort such a poor, pathetic little girl.
Exhaustion then deathly sleep .
Brief respite for half an hour or half a day.
Until I wake and wait and then. it. starts.
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