Eighth grade: The first time I remember feeling

That attack of anxiety consume me

Making my heart freeze, my body tense, my mind frantic.

 

Like a storm it passed:

Intense, sudden fear,

Like the lightning strikes overhead

On a long rainy night, where the heavy clouds

Cover the moon, your only friend in an endless dark,

Till those last panicked thoughts sprinkled down into nothingness.

 

My first intention: Text my friends.

And text I did,

My hands shaking, my heart still beating quickly,

My fingers slid over the screen

As I struggled to type,

Letter by letter,

“I think I just had an anxiety attack.”

 

One hour passes. Two.

I fall asleep clutching my phone,

As if it was the only thing keeping me grounded.

The night is calm,

Unlike the onslaught of the thoughts just hours before.

 

Morning breaks,

And I am greeted by exactly 0 new messages.

 

Once again,

I am consumed:

No one cares. You’re overreacting.

It doesn’t matter.

Why did you say anything at all?

 

It wasn’t the first time I’d been anxious,

And it wouldn’t be the last.

But it was the first time I’d felt the physical constraints:

The tenseness of my body, restraining me from any comfort,

The pumping of my heart, faster than ever,

The head-spinning nausea and the stomach-turning queasiness.

 

And yet, it no longer felt important to me.

How could it, when not a single soul

Listened to my plea for help?

My text would be ignored

Lost in sea of messages a week later

Concerned with a completely different topic.

Any other mention of it later on

Would be drowned out by the cries of people hurting more than me.

 

And so the world lost a voice that day,

When I decided it wasn’t worth the fear of judgement

For a chance to share how I feel.

The number of bottled emotions grows everyday:

Hundreds of shelves lined with my shameful nights in tears,

My secrets piled on one another,

Hiding the darkest one deep inside.

 

Perhaps someday I’ll reclaim that lost voice as my own.

I’ll use it to speak out,

And encourage those like me

Not to hide, but to feel,

And those bystanders not to ignore,

But to acknowledge, to reassure.

A voice once lost to darkness

Comes back to spread the light.