Panic
The manifestations were tangibly coalescing with her body..
There was no going back now!
One morning, Sal’s life flashed back and then forward
before her very eyes;
She was at once hot then piercingly cold,
particularly along her spine,
And a feeling of pins and needles at her back.
She seemed to be convulsing,
whilst sitting on the step of the front porch,
with uncontrollable palms trembling,
And an unwholesome feeling of being about to black-out.
“Uh great, she thought, “I’m gonna die alone, typical!”
Briefly holding one palm to her throbbing chest,
her heart felt as if it was going to beat right on out of her!
This was surely the panic attack to end all panic attacks.
Life was never going to be quite the same if she got through,
This she knowingly understood.
She stumbled back inside with a slight feeling of floating..
and immediately called her mum on the phone.
“Mum there is something wrong with me -
I can’t seem to calm down,” as she struggled to hold her body up in a chair.
Sal’s posture seemed to be both limp and tense simultaneously.
“Can you please help me?”
“Can you please take me to emergency? I can’t..”
She was still shaking a little and,
had taken some Valium from the top kitchen cupboard,
then rested her head on the tops of her palms,
placing these flat on the glass dining table,
her eyes penetrated through her fingers,
and locked on to the rug below with the animal print,
and below that the tiles, and then the brown earth..
Straining to think coherently,
She obsessively placed, with fumbling fingers, a guided meditation on
from ‘Smiling Mind’ from her iPad whilst she waited.
Such shortness of breath. Breathe dammit breathe!
What is wrong with you!?
She didn't hear a word of the meditation -
just a meandering humming at her ears,
Instead, there was a mishmash of multiple inner-voices
in her mind scattered with a few pictures,
with an abhorrent feeling that they seemed to be moving
along a train track faster and faster and faster!!
Fifteen minutes had passed and
her breathing began to slowly regulate.
She’d remembered before she hung up the phone to her mum,
That she’d uttered, “I love you” -
as if it might be the last time they spoke.
She would rarely say that to her mum ordinarily,
she was too proud for that, yet Sal was scared to the core.
She still didn’t feel quite right!
Was her soul under attack by her ego’s rifle?
Shooting at her nervous system again and again,
Knocking her back down, down, down?…
Was this Sal’s ‘dark night of the soul’ before the ego-death or,
perhaps a mystical kundalini experience of reawakening?
Time would surely tell..
As she slowly looked around,
Why did everything have this pervasive,
ominous ugliness?
From tables to walls to
dark dysphoric corners of the room,
and the greasy grime in the kitchen,
It was as if these manifestations were tangibly coalescing with her body,
making her skin itch!
Can she find her safe space and can she relearn to self-soothe?
Sal would have to wait,
And patiently wait through a time of much hard work,
To let go of the shackles that chained her asunder,
To be and to be free -
- 2023
Thanks for reading my free verse poem about panic attacks - written for the “Sensational” challenge.
If you liked it, please consider hitting the heart or subscribing for more to encourage my future poems, short stories and film reviews. Many thanks.
You can also check out another of my recent free verse pieces “That ‘something’ Memory..” here:
About the Creator
Grz Colm
Film and TV reviews, 🎞 as well as short stories and free verse poems.
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Comments (29)
This was incredible! one of your best! love and hate how realistically nightmarish it feels and that even when things calm she is still worried! thank you for sharing!
This was a great read!
Super!!! Excellent story!!!
This is intense 😱
this was right in my wheel house. This weekend I had my first panic attack. It was different then this, but it was just as intense. Hopefully it will be my last one
This was so emotional and intense Well done
I love the vivid description very captivating I felt like I was there seeing it! Do you have quite a way with words!
Grz I love your descriptive language and the way you play on the readers senses as you set the scene! It felt eery, tantalizing and hypnotic in the sense of knowing you’re about to watch a train wreck but can’t look away! I also liked your turn of phrase when creating some very memorable imagery too! My favourite was “Was her soul under attack by her ego’s rifle? Shooting at her nervous system again and again,” I imagine that is what a panic attack feels like to the person so this imagery was a great relating piece for the readers! I also really appreciate a lot of your vocabulary choices! I’m a bit of a word nerd and I love learning new words, so you gave me cause for some googling and I really appreciate that! Some of the words I looked up were asunder and coalescing. This was an amazing read, I loves every minute of it! Great work Grz!
That was very powerful Grz! I imagine many of us here are 'experts' on the nature of panic attacks and everyone who reads this poem will appreciate the success you had nailing the feeling down. Well done!
Wow, that was so good. It was frightening! The way you describe it, it puts the reader there in the situation! You expressed a lot of familiar feelings in this, and piling them all on together, that was immersive! Well done!
Alarming and interesting ❤️💯🎯Great writing 📝 ❗
Very real, compelling. Felt like I was there. Very well done 💙Anneliese
This gave me chills!!
The pacing of this story really added to the emotion. It gave the sense of panic and urgency. Very well done!
I could feel this. Such an amazing depiction of a panic attack. Great job.
Woah! Grz, every word in this gripped me. This panic felt like a true death. I've witnessed this experience and this was a re-living. Such profound descriptions fully immersed me in the intensity of this reality. Thank you for writing this. Vivid insight into this experience are very helpful.
Souls-Ego's rifle. That is deep. This was a really soul scaring heart wrenching and touching story. Very personal sense of deja vu. Beautifully done.
I felt clutched in a vice reading this. You really brought those feelings to life. Wow, well done.
Fantastic poem. I particularly liked this line - “ Was her soul under attack by her ego’s rifle?”
Grz thank you for this very REAL depiction of Panic Attacks via Slam Poetry. I have Bipolar 1 (Rapid Cycling) and Complex PTSD. And I fit the comorbidity of ‘Anxiety is Bipolar’s best friend.’ Panic attacks have been a feature of my life since my teens. The dread of death and lack of control is terrifying. To be denied breath by a smack of doom. It’s not hysteria but true mental suffering with the ever present fear of ‘when next’ and frantic checks for prn valium - ‘please always br on hand.’ Unpredictable onset and my learned coping strategies disappear when the grip rips through my very being. I have my coded techniques written on small cards in my purposefully bought zip purse always with me (with the valium slide of 10 - which should be forever restocked.) Yet I fumble in an attempt to unzip. Vision blurred unable to read my cards. Most times they fall and scatter. Though seized by terror I’m able to hear the crack of the valium pack. No apps help me as well. I’ve deleted smiling mind! It’s the 10mg yearning for release that stops total collapse. A 000 call in Brisbane (Australia) still occasionally. Then relief and utter exhaustion. I had to stop driving in 2012 because of such frequent occuences. Grz do you mind if I share this on my FB page. I only have 98 friends carefully considered and trusted. My account is welll secured. Many my friends have a mental illness and suffered panic attacks. It will also provide my other friends with a highly perceptive insight about this debilitating condition. Pauline 🌸
Oh man, I felt the fear and panic in this for sure. Such good use of descriptions to bring the senses alive; I felt like I was there, experiencing this all. I really love the beauty of that last line, "To be and to be free -" Awesome work!
Nicely done, very descriptive and relatable. :)
This is excellent and you will get your $50 bonus as well. Congratulations
This was vivid and raw so good
This was so relatable because I always have panic attacks and palpitations. My last one was 2 months back. I couldn’t breath and it went on for more than 30 minutes. My parents rushed me to the emergency. My heart rate was above 200bpm. They injected me with Adenosine to bring my heart rate back to normal. Unfortunately, it didn't work but my blood pressure started to plunge to dangerously low levels. So they gave me cardioversion, which is an electric shock. And that finally helped. Turns out I was having an Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) attack. I'm on medication now but I need to undergo heart ablation surgery in July. Panic attacks should not be taken lightly. It's so scary.