The Day I Forgot to Breathe

It happened in the produce aisle of a grocery store. I was reaching for a bag of clementines when the air disappeared. Not just around me, but inside me. One second I was comparing prices, and the next, my chest cinched tight like someone had yanked a cord around my ribs. It wasn’t pain. It was something worse—weightless, formless, like the idea of drowning while standing perfectly still.

At first, I thought maybe I just stood up too fast. Maybe I skipped breakfast. But then the lights above the fruit display went soft around the edges, and everything became too loud and too quiet at the same time. I heard the beeping of registers, the soft cough of the man behind me, a kid laughing in the next aisle. Every sound slammed into my skull like a hammer. My heartbeat thundered, and my lungs forgot how to move. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My lips were trembling. My hands were wet. I couldn’t explain anything to anyone. I just dropped the bag of fruit and walked out the door without saying a word.

By the time I got to my car, my whole body was shaking. I remember gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t speak. I just sat there, staring at my reflection in the rearview mirror, eyes wide and wild like an animal that had just escaped something it didn’t understand. I didn’t cry—not at first. I just sat in the silence and waited for it to pass. I didn't know what “it” was.

Eventually, a tear fell. Then another. And then I was sobbing in the front seat of my car, the clementines still rolling somewhere inside the store, forgotten like the person I’d been ten minutes earlier. That’s when it hit me: this wasn’t about low blood sugar. This wasn’t a random glitch in the day. This was panic. And I’d felt it before—but quieter. This time, it came roaring through my chest like a warning siren. And behind it, hiding in the noise, was something I didn’t want to face.

Grief. It was always grief.

I remembered a voicemail from my dad I never listened to. It had come two days before the accident. He’d called to tell me about a movie he thought I’d like. He’d ended it with, “Call me if you want.” I hadn’t called. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I thought I had time. I kept the voicemail for a while, but I never pressed play. It felt safer that way. Like the moment would stay frozen if I didn’t move.

In the days after his funeral, I went back to work. I smiled at people. I answered emails. I made plans. I told myself I was fine. Everyone said I was strong, and I nodded because that’s what you’re supposed to do. But strength isn’t silence. It isn’t smiling while your body tries to scream. And apparently, if you ignore your grief long enough, it’ll find its way out in a grocery store on a random Tuesday, when your guard is down and all you want is fruit.

I never talked about what it did to me. Not really. People get uncomfortable when you bring up death in casual conversation. I learned to turn it into a joke. I’d say things like, “Oh yeah, losing my dad really made me efficient. No time to waste!” And everyone would laugh, relieved. I became very good at making other people comfortable with my discomfort.

But that day in the car, I couldn’t hide from it anymore. I cried until my face was hot and blotchy, until my throat ached from holding in years of what I hadn’t said. I remembered sitting next to my dad’s hospital bed, watching the heart monitor count down like a clock with no mercy. I remembered thinking, “Say something,” but never knowing what. I remembered my mom’s hands, too small on his chest, saying goodbye like a whisper. And I remembered the way I left that room, walking straight into a version of myself that didn’t know how to breathe anymore.

That panic attack wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me. But it was the moment I realized I’d never truly let myself feel the worst thing. I’d packed it up in a box labeled “handled” and stacked it neatly with all the other things I didn’t want to talk about. Except grief doesn’t follow labels. It leaks through cracks. It lives in your bones, in the background noise, in the moments when the world feels too bright and your body forgets how to exist inside it.

I didn’t fix it all that day. There was no grand revelation. No perfect closure. I didn’t call a therapist the next morning or suddenly open up to my friends. But I did one thing: I told someone. A week later, I sat across from someone I trusted and said, “I think I had a panic attack.” Saying the words out loud felt like peeling off a scab. I didn’t bleed, but I finally breathed.

That was the beginning. I started writing things down. Not poems or essays, just thoughts. I gave the fear a name. I let myself miss my dad without masking it as productivity. I started going for walks without music, just to hear the sound of my own breath. And slowly, my chest began to loosen.

I still carry the grief. It didn’t vanish. But it doesn’t sit on my lungs the same way anymore. And every time I feel that pressure creeping back in, I remember the oranges, the cold steering wheel, the blur of my own reflection in the mirror—and I breathe.

This is the story only I can tell. Not because it’s the most dramatic or the most tragic. But because it’s mine. Because I lived it. Because I survived it. Because I am the one who stood in the silence and finally said, “I don’t want to be silent anymore.”