Every Breath I Breathe (Is Waiting Catastrophe)

It starts with a thought,

Spiraling out of control. 

I don't realize it, though. 

I'm just thinking through everything.

Every memory,

Every moment.

Every heart ache,

Every reason I'm the way I am.

Every song I've loved,

Every book I've read. 

And somehow I connect

All of this together into 

One thought.

And it goes through my mind

Again and again and again.

They always describe it as a whisper,

But that's not what it is.

It's me. 

I'm thinking it.

It's not a demon,

Or a beast,

Or some monstrous 

Alternate personality.

It's me. I'm telling myself

That I am everything 

I'm afraid to be.

And that's what brings it on.

One deep breath.

I can feel my heart picking up.

Can feel my lungs contracting

On the next inhale.

And it's like a race between 

Mind and body.

Because I can't breathe.

I can't control myself.

In out in out in out in out

Some breaths harsh and fast,

Some deep and slow,

But it doesn't go. 

Because I'm not in control. 

I can see everything around me,

I can feel all of the things happening,

But I can't do anything.

My body is operating itself

And it doesn't know how to.

I'm dying

Only I'm not.

All I can think,

Is I'm trapped.

I can't get out.

I can't escape my own body. 

Breathing.

In out in out in out

Faster.

I can feel the tears and snot,

And my back aches in the worst way.

And it all started with a thought

But I'm too scared to think it.

And I'm not breathing.

I'm choking.

Mouth open wide

Please, please, please

Let me breathe.

And it's a long moment where

I'm staring at nothing

Begging for something

That I'm scared won't happen.

And then I inhale again

And I think maybe it's over

But 

In out in out in out

There's no escape. 

In out in out in out

Faster, faster.

I'm trembling,

Shaking to the core.

My shoulders hurt.

It's unbearable

But I can't make it stop.

I can't take this,

But I can't move. 

And then it happens.

Like someone's flipped a switch

Right in the center of my head.

Because my breathings slowing. 

And I'm still terrified.

But I have some control.

In

Out

In

Out

Slow and safe.

Slow and safe. 

And I'm here again.

Shaking and breathless.

Scared and a little lost.

But my breathing is

Slow and safe.

I'm not going to die.

I knew that already, though,

It's a hard thought to remember,

When you have no hold. 

When you have no control.

And I'm sitting here,

Suddenly exhausted and barely conscious.

It all started with one thought.

It always does. 

Author's Note

Panic attacks are terrifying. And poetry is the only way I really know how to get this out of my system after the fact.