Panic Attacks

I thought that I was never going to stand tall again. I thought that I was forever broken, nothing more than damaged goods, lying around still and lifeless amongst the rest of the pieces of shattered glass scattered about in this deserted warehouse we call life. Every time I used to hold her hands and ask her wondering if things will ever get back to how they were, I'd doubt her when she'd look at me, smile beautifully, and tell me with all the confidence in the world that it'll pass the way everything else we have been through had passed. I love her so much, I'd then think to myself and smile back silently, holding in my pain, fear, and doubt away from what her eyes could see, protecting her from feeling helpless and in chains.

I was sweating, lightheaded, and breathing with difficulty. I was terrified. Death felt close, hovering around, leaving me to my torture while watching in exhilaration before deciding to take my soul. The sound of my heart was loud enough to ring in my ears almost rendering me deaf to anything else, and the pounding was powerful enough to feel like my heart was trying to tear away from all of what holds it down in place and dissect its way out of my chest fleeing for its life. It was agony in one of its purest forms. Overall I wanted to run, far away from where I stood. I would if I could, but I couldn't, so I stay put. I stood there, a statue, with an escalating war inside. Destruction brought all of Rome down to ashes inside of me yet I stood there, a statue. I held my ground.

The suffering went on for a month and a half. There were times in between when I wanted to succumb to medications and bid my will to be enslaved by a pill. Ridiculous you think? Salvation I thought. I am non-other than a bag of flesh and bones, incapable of being divine, though capable of believing in THE divine and in a better tomorrow, so I clenched on to my faith one day at a time. I knew deep down that God had something in store for me, something beyond what my dreams could see, and sure did he. He raised me up to be a bark by surrounding my green weakness with adversity. He allowed life to batter me to bits with an iron fist, but fixed my bones with screws and plates of strength and perseverance. He let me drown in a sea of fears, but taught me how to swim to shore. I am who I am today, standing tall, and a living proof for you to see that what does't kill you makes you stronger.