Pointed Sticks

I had been told to use both sides of my brain to relieve it. Clench fists and release. Walk. Tap drum beats with my fingers. Something about resetting the brain. I had no idea what truth there was to it but I was balled up on my couch breathless and with stinging eyes, moving my index fingers back and forth quickly and begging myself to breathe.

Breathe.

Everything is fine. You are fine. This is nothing. Just a trick played on yourself. Breathe. Breathe.

My chest rose and fell irrhythmically and quick and with my face smothered in the beaten and old cushion I focused on the black. The warmth. Safety.

Everything is fine. You are fine. This is nothing. This is nothing. This is nothing.

My teeth smashed tight against themselves and I groaned through them between the bursts of breaths. It was morning still and I hadn't had a panic attack in a couple of weeks but this was making up for it.

I had lost my health insurance and with it my meds and with it my calm and I tapped my goddamn fingers and before that I had tried to quell the whole beast by breathing slow and staring into a glass of water. It used to work, years ago. It didn't now and there I was, fetal in variety.

It's going to pass. It's nothing. Breathe, you asshole. Breathe. 

I had received a phone call. Nothing horrible. Nothing abnormal. Just a phone call with a person on the other end and they asked me questions and it was only a conversation. That had been it. The slip. The punch. I had never enjoyed phone calls. I had never enjoyed surprises. With texts you can think. You can plan. Phone calls put me in the spotlight. They surround me and point their sharp sticks into my ribs and they demand and I speak as the spears pierce into me and I hide as the bones split apart and I act as the lungs fail and when it ends, when i hang up, when I can finally exhale, I can't. The play is over. The stage gone. The audience never knows the actor and the actor is crumpled.

A television plays behind me. Actors.

I tapped my fingers and pulled my face from the cushion and I could finally pull in a large breathe and my eyes burned. I rolled onto my back. Another breath. Another.

This is nothing.

Another breath.

"Nothing," I say.

I sat up and my cheeks stung and my chest hurt and the sticks were gone and my bones slid back into place and my lungs expanded and contracted and repeated and I thought; Fuck. I'm going to have to rewatch the last twenty minutes and I shook my head.