I'm having the longest panic attack of my life.

the shaking circles

I've been pacing back and forth. Trying to control my breathing. Like something's clutching my chest,  cracking me from the inside out.

That's exactly how it feels.

These thoughts I assumed I had conquered long ago, somehow resurrected to taunt me, shaking me in circles searching surfaces, eyes darting, and I can not find what medicine will cure me.

Fuck, even just a band-aid would help.

It's only been a week and here I am, walking on that thin ledge, emotional winds gusting around my ankles. Threatening to take me down if I don't let them into my lungs, permeate my blood, cells and soul.

It's a dead scream, the way that wind howls.

I want to go home before I tear myself to pieces.

Holding my breath, gnawing my bones.

Just let me be alone.

Glorious Torture

My watch beeped uncaringly, alerting me that the time was, in fact, one am.

I stood in my mother's room, motionless, emotions piercing my stomach, holding my breath hostage. An hour had passed and I was still in her room, surrounded, eyes darting as I clutched my wine glass delicately. It was like some sickness that slowly crept from one room to the next, piling up to frame pathways.

Clutter.

Clothes, Christmas wrapping paper, shoes, hangers, papers, papers, self help books (....), written journal entries that had become unbound....film negatives, that upon closer inspection, revealed my beaming 2 year old smile as I sat top my rocking horse, pieces of my history buried between my parent's final divorce agreement and a check my grandmother had written to me over ten years ago for a Christmas present. My heavy eyes watched towering demons laughing all the way to the bank, and I'm sure no ghost living in that room could relate, sure as the skeletons chilling in the closet sunned themselves every day, strewn across the floor in front of the adjacent window.

I held onto a door nob, stretching my right leg over a pile of storage boxes and nameless objects, struggling to find footing that would not betray me as I made my way across her abandoned room. Like swimming through your open ocean past as a cold under currant churns some distant storm that one day will come for you.

I keep surprising myself...even in this moment, sleep starved laying on a mattress on the floor next to my mother, who has slept on the couch for the past 20 years. "Don't turn off the television, it's my friend...it keeps me company while I sleep."

And here I find myself wandering through this house, pretending to be mature, fooling some audience, feeding on the applause and disbelief...My little brother never told me it was this bad.

Yet somehow....it's like the past doesn't belong to me anymore. It's not about me anymore. My mission here is to help. Whatever that translates to. Shit's about to get real. Is the role of the middle-man only to prepare one for being a leader? Because I realized tonight that the eyes were on me to create the plan, and initiate the change.

This is the path I have cultivated, to be able to facilitate healing crisis.

The membrane of this safety bubble is about to be pierced; suddenly I have found myself carrying a sword of truth and bandage of compassion, tie-dyed with my own blood.

Because if you're going to kill something, it might as well be beautiful.