Everything's fine.
You're sitting, or walking, or more than likely, trying to fall asleep. You're okay. You have a bed, you're not hungry, your home is safe, your parents love you, your friends are good people.
Everything's fine.
So why, pray tell, dear universe, is your throat closing up, is your vision blurring, does your chest feeling like its both being crushed inwards and torn outwards, are your thoughts spiraling, are your hands shaking, are you gasping gasping gasping?
Everything's fine.
A single thought floated, unbidden, across your consciousness and now it's like someone pressed pause, stopped time like in a superhero movie, but instead of everyone else being stuck and you moving, you're stuck and everyone else is moving. A single thought, of what? It doesn't even matter, you don't even remember, your thoughts are skipping over your thoughts are skipping over the same your thoughts are skipping over the same thing over and over and over. It feels like what you'd imagine a record scratch would sound like, if you could imagine anything right now. Don't worry, you can't.
Everything's fine.
It's a few seconds. It's not like, full blown anxiety. You know what that feels like too. Trying to count tiles on the floor or remembering everything you ate that day or counting how long you inhale and exhale. It's nothing serious, nothing worth talking to anyone about. It's just there now, more than it was before, which isn't really that hard anyway because it wasn't there at all before. These feelings are new, for you, but they're over so fast it's like you could even do anything about them if you tried, right? And there, it's fading. What made it fade? You don't even know what triggered it so how could you possibly understand how to get rid of it. But that doesn't matter anyway, because
everything's fine.
Five seconds. There, it's gone. See? Nothing to worry about. Chest crushing blind consuming mind-wiping panic for five seconds and we're back to normal operating procedures. It wasn't even that bad, really, was it? No one's noticed. Your heart rate would barely have registered a blip. Everything is fine. Now, what were we talking about?
