panic at the school!

Y’all. I don’t mention my mental health a lot, solely because I feel it is my personal health and sharing that with the world seems a little too personal, but I feel this particular story I’m about to share makes for a good blog post.

Long story short…I had a panic attack at school (hence the title…get it…panic at the dis–no? okay). It happened out of the ordinary, but I have conducted a personal investigation and tried to figure out the cause. Now, I know you guys want the gory details. I get it, I get it…if I was reading this, I would want to know what happened in detail too. In fact, I would have a million questions.

“Where did it happen?

Who was around you?

Did you fall?

Did anybody help you?”

And if you don’t have any questions and would just like me to get on with the rest of the post…I feel you and will happily do that for you. *inserts two thumbs up* But, and you guys know there is always a “but”, I need to feed the hungry eyes that are looking for the breakdown of the panic attack. Since this is a literary blog, and I am a literary person…literary artist?…okay I write, I wrote a free verse poem to explain the panic attack as coherent as possible. Look below for said poem…

panic attack

I forgot how to breathe today.
The air from my lungs escaped through my nose until the very last drop left my
body.

The moment fell on me spontaneously.

Silence rang through my ears
and everything stopped.
Time slowed for me and my sight faltered.
The only thing I could see were the blurred figures walking past
me.

Panic wrapped me in its arms a second later.
The rhythm of my heartbeat sprung from a steady beat into a fast
crescendo.

My fingers eagerly reached out to grab ahold of something,
but they were met with only the air that escaped
my lungs.

My hands start shaking.
The slight tremor moved to my knees and I soon
collapsed.

Almost…as if in slow motion…it slowly came back to me.

Breath
Hearing
Sight.

I slowly lifted myself off the ground and held my chest.
I can’t believe I forgot how to breathe today.

As soon as I calmed down from the panic attack and could focus on one thing, the first line of the poem was on repeat in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking of that sentence, so I turned it into something poetic? I don’t know if that’s poetic, but it was very relieving to write it.

Moving on to the details of my investigation *inserts Nancy Drew magnifying glass*, I narrowed down the suspects to the top three likely causes of the panic attack.

1. Stress. I was very stressed out prior to the attack and under a lot of emotional and physical strain. I made this the top reason because it seems like the most plausible.
2.  I was simply freaking out. I have a small tendency…medium tendency…okay a large tendency to freak out over the smallest things. Prior to the panic attack, I was freaking out over a particular submission despite having plenty, and y’all I mean PLENTY of time to finish it. I think this could have been the cause, but I still think I was just stressed out.
3.  I simply forgot how to breathe. Now this may seem the least likely, but it makes sense. Have y’all ever forgotten how to do the most basic task ever? Like you may have forgotten how to blink normally because you were focusing on how you blink too hard? Does that make sense? I hope it does because I don’t know how else to say it, but that’s essentially what could have happened. There have been multiple occasions where I have been focused on my breathing and simply lost track of my original breathing flow. I think this could have been the cause, but then again I still think it was because of stress.

Whatever reason caused the panic attack…it wasn’t fun. It honestly made me actually stop and focus on myself for once. I had to ask myself if I was okay. I get so caught up in things that I completely ignore my mental and spiritual health. It is almost like I lose sight of those parts of myself. In this case, I lost the mental part of myself for a minute, and the only way I could think of finding that part of myself again was to be hit with the reality that I wasn’t okay mentally per the reason I had a panic attack. BUT, then again…I could have honestly just forgot how to breathe.