the attack

it came to me almost like vomit, a regurgitation of sorts of things i had long wished would just leave me alone. in the back of my head, i had anticipated something like this to happen since one can only repress so much, yet what caught me off guard was the force that it came to me, almost like being punched in the gut, making my insides collapse and leaving me hungry for air.

i often brace myself of anxiety attacks such as these during my drives to work. they are the aftershocks of the clear thoughts i get during my morning walks, during the moments when i am ironically at my most quiet and most peaceful. how something so serene can bring about such turbulence is still beyond me, but then again, i should learn how to not be surprised of these things anymore. the attacks have almost become a daily fixture of my day now, almost routinary even though i would most definitely still wish it were not so. despite my efforts to calm myself and even convince myself that my fears are baseless, the waves of panic still come. though often they are weak enough for me to brush them off as mere nonsense, there will come days, like today, when they come stronger than normal, as if trying to make up for those other days when they failed to make a dent in my demeanor.

it usually starts out as an idea, quite benign, almost insignificant really, nowhere near the onslaught it would eventually become. it floats around in my head, bouncing off the other ideas now slowly filing themselves into orderly piles as i also begin to sequence the tasks i have to do for the day. somewhere during this process of mine, this unique idea, minor as it it, finds itself a welcoming nick in my psyche, issues as mcvie once mentioned (the same ones that would rival that of TIME magazine). it lodges itself tightly onto it, irritating it, setting off a catabolic chain reaction that pushes my mind to go on hyperdrive. it feels like opening pandora's box wherein all things scary and dark comes out and shoots into your direct vision, not in the cloak of darkness unfortunately but in clear, broad daylight. my mind troubled now, my body follows suit, like the gullible idiot that it is. it reacts to the imaginary insult and sends my heart racing, my head spinning, my chest tightening almost till i have to gasp. there will be a surge of extreme emotion that would well up inside me, overwhelming me and at the same time, draining me of every bit of will power i have left to fend this attack off, for it seems, my attack's main goal is simply to rob me out of hope and permanently send me onto a death spiral of despair. hands now tightly clenched around the steering wheel and trying my best to keep myself still, i scream in my head and i pray unto God, desperate for some reprieve before i am completely exhausted. and just like that, almost as how instantly my world came crashing down on me, it ends, leaving me to pick up my broken pieces on my own, driving to work, tired, breathless and a little more closer to giving up.

i can only dread what tomorrow will be like.

* * * * *

this shouldn't mean anything really. it really shouldn't. but on the moment i had a thought about you and started to reach for my phone to ask how you were, on that moment when your message beat me to my intention of contacting you first, a little bit of hope was added to my stores. a little bit of hope was enough to pull me back, just enough, to keep me safe. for this, i am grateful. thank you so very much.