Ode To The Public Panic Attack

Lyrics

You find me at the coffee shop, at the movies, buying comfort food in the grocery store. You find me on dates, which is terrible, because on dates I really try to appear––dateable. You found me at Disneyland, in line for The Little Mermaid Slow Moving Clam Ride. You found me at parties so often I stopped celebrating my own birthday. You found me on an airplane, in the arms of the medic, after the plane stopped on the runway and turned around to let me off. Don't worry, the medic said, It's just a panic attack, as if that would comfort me, to be told I am the enemy, to know my body is its own stalker. Last week, you found me on stage, In the middle of a poem Chewed the hairs on the back of my neck Until I couldn't hear the words coming out of my mouth Until I wasn't even there Do you know how hard it is to read a poem When you're in another state googling, sudden onset asthma or how many bugs are in the human body? Is it possible to be eaten alive while an audience is all eyes asking, Are OK? Are you OK? Are you OK? No, never. But I am creative, so when I can't breathe I tell myself, It's fine. That's just my heart giving my sternum a high five fifty times a second. After the show I said to my friend, that was so humiliating. Did I look like a goat giving birth in a mall? Yes, she says. But also like someone who had fallen Though an iced over lake and was screaming To find the hole they fell through To take a breath. I think every good artist makes their audience uncomfortable. I'd hoped to do that with my politics and not my body flailing like the about-to-be-dead-girl in a teenage horror flick, my own spine curling into the claw that strips me down to my day of the week panties–– and it's always Doomsday. If you've never had a panic attack, there's a good chance you've been an ass to someone who has. It makes sense that JUST RELAX would feel like a helpful thing to say if oxygen has never been over your head, if your body has never become its own corset. At the restaurant I say, I have a small bladder, because it's less awkward than saying, My parachute didn't open when I left the house and I prefer the privacy of bathroom stalls when falling towards my death at the speed of utter darkness. what pisses me off is that this ever got misnamed weakness Do you know how much courage it takes to live through this shit? To know the apocalypse is on the other side of the front door, and still–– I reach for the knob. To step towards the terror. Its promised jaw. To scrape your boots on the welcome mat. To tell yourself fear Is the seat of fearlessness. Even when you're falling through the ice that is never Been weakness. That is the bravest thing I have ever done in my life.