There's a comet heading for my house. It's due any minute, just ask my Vagus nerve. In fact, it altered course because I moved from the sofa to my office chair and I am the target. Either way, it's large enough to take out a small country, so there's no escape.
Or, maybe, it's not a comet. It's a plague. I picked it up in the produce aisle at Sam's Club. It's incubating, spreading, getting ready to erupt as lava-filled boils, from my head to the soles of my feet.
Whatever form doom finally dons will be an unspeakable relief, a reason for the panic that torments me right now. Yes, I know I'll die. Every cell in my body is screaming it. We are definitely going to die!
Except, we're not. It's a lie.
My Vagus nerve is a proficient storyteller and its chosen genre is horror. But it has convinced my brain, my intestines, my very skin that we've slipped into a Shirley Jackson reality; that it's not a dream, there is no hope, and we cannot wake from the nightmare. Even in death, there will be more dread, more pain, no end to despair.
In about an hour, I won't understand why I ever felt this way.
I goes against the grain to write when I'm in the clutches of anxiety induced panic attacks, but in our darkest hour we find our mettle and I have decided to fight back. Mostly, I just want my present self to explain the madness to my future self.
Next time, I want to remember that we did not die, but we had every right to believe we would.
Symptoms of anxiety attacks and panic attacks.
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