Panic

You feel it in your chest. The weight of it and know, just know that this time it’s different.

It’s alright.

It’s going to be alright. You’ve been through this before. Many times. So many times, and you’ve kept it hidden so well.

You’re becoming a regular master of disguises.

But what if this time something really is wrong?

The whole world is wrong, and everything is falling apart and everyone is fighting,

and fighting,

and fighting.

Fighting for something that is important, more important than life itself.

Than breath—

Breathe.

In.

Out.

Come back.

You can’t help but feel the mask slipping and notice the looks from others. Looks you know are just all in your head. They can’t know how you’re feeling. They can’t even comprehend the weight of it all. But a smile can only dam up so much. Part of you wants to scream. To grab hold of someone and ask how they can be so fine with everything going on and then you realize they are probably just as scared as you.

Or you’re just crazy.

Alone and crazy and feeling everything though you can’t possibly feel it all because none of this is happening to you until it is and it’s just a matter of time before it all falls apart before it all comes crashing—

Step away.

Close the door in the lucky chance you can find one this time.

Close your eyes.

Take a deep breath.

It’s all you can do in the moment to keep from wrenching the mask off and showing that monster beneath. Revealing that twisted amalgam of consequence and pain this world is stitching you into. A cold, creeping body of vicarious rotting limbs and clouded eyes, dead but seeing all that can be—seeing too much—and feeling the weight of it upon a webwork of hyper-awareness.

A single heart can’t take it.

You clutch your knees to your chest and let the tears go. The only release it seems lately. To hide in the dark places you can find. A frightened animal always on the run from a threat much bigger than you can comprehend. Faceless and looming, claws bared, ready to strike.

This weight in your chest. It’s different. You know it now and know this time it’s real. The end is coming. It’s really is coming, and this experience will be the last thing you witness of this once beautiful and happy now a spiraling cyclone of terror and pain dismantling, scorched feathers cast into the fiery winds all that was once good in this world.

All of it coming to burning desolation.

But it doesn’t.

You’re still here. Still breathing.

The pain is still there, but so are you.

You dust yourself off. Wipe the tears away and hope more than anything the mask isn’t shattered because it’s all you have right now. It’s all you can afford in a world dripping with wealth you can’t touch.

You carefully grip tight to those second-hand bootstraps already torn by the generation before and continue on because that’s all there is left to do.

It’s not happy. Nothing is right now, but you continue on.

Another panic subsided.

Another day won out but, in the end, who really wins in a world like this?