Soft padded sheets with a chalk-white fade
Contours from repeated pressure illustrating a familiar shape
Indented rivets in the overused cushion where you tried to hide
Red-turned-brown spots dried, markers of where you failed to keep it inside
Timid stains of salty moisture once fallen from your eyes
Now just a faded gravestone to the bliss simplicity brought before your fight died
Deaf ears and the pleas that pass through their shallow halls
But the sound changes octaves as it bounces off the thin beige walls
And so it echoes unheard as it falls
One too many close calls to accept the sound that emulates from it all
Trembling bones under heavy skin clutching the bed-frame with an iron grip
Second only to the pressure your upper teeth have on your lower lip
Revolving doors unhinged, flooding your thoughts as they race
Tired eyes stay bolted open, not recognizing the shape of your own face
in the jagged glass that now lays fractured and stained from the image you tried to replace
But it still didn't go away
“This is it,” you say
Cavernous holes,
Once whole,
Now just hollow shells you used to call home
Empty of all heart and all hope
And you brace for the hit, the moment where it finally all goes black
And the silence will finally answer back,
telling you you've ****** it up, it's all rotted through, you didn't fight hard enough and now you're done
And every single time you're still surprised when that moment never comes
And despite the tremors and daggers, your stubborn heart carries on
So find the narrow sliver of air where reality and your mind meet
And take in all the oxygen like it isn’t always free
There isn’t much too it,
You just put your head down and breathe
Because if there’s only one thing of which you can be sure
It's that these souls were designed to endure
And "this too shall pass" will become true once more
Let your heart and its resting pace made amends
Once the shaking stops you can finally stand
And wear that smile until courage finds you again
Somewhere inside you always knew this isn’t how it ends.
Tried to verbalize in prose my some of my experience of one of the many panic attacks from my dark days of recovery just locked inside my bedroom.
.It's sloppy and incoherent, but then so too is anxiety, so maybe it works.