Panic Attack
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Angelia Mcleish, Grade 8
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Short Story
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2016
I don't know what happened that night. The tears welled up in my eyes like they always do. I expected them to just silently fall like they always do when every other night when it's late, dark and I'm alone with my thoughts.
But they didn't. Instead, my breathing hitched, the tears didn't stop, and my thoughts were nothing but white noise.
I tried to take a breath, but all I could do was sob. My mind was a mess and so was my heart. I sat there and realised what was happening.
Images flashed through my mind. They were people, people I knew. They all had the same facial expression. Disappointment.
One after the other they kept coming, my parents, my sister, my friends, my ex, my crush. They wouldn't stop and they were pushing me to my breaking point. The tears were leaving stains on my pillow but at that point I didn't care.
Then they stopped.
I tried to take another breath but I couldn't. The tears felt like acid on my face.
There were more images. Ones of the same people. But something was different. This time, they weren't looking at me in disappointment. No, they were smiling and laughing. I almost laughed too, until I realised what they were laughing at.
The names they called me flashed through my brain.
Ugly. Useless. Fat. Disgusting. Worthless.
I sat there, tears flowing, unable to breathe and these horrible things running through my mind.
I reached my hands up and put them over my ears, hoping that would stop it. But of course it did nothing. I rocked back and forth.
What happened next I couldn't even control. I started talking to the voices in my head. All I was saying was "make it stop". That's all I could say. I repeated that one sentence over and over again until I was yelling. But of course no one could hear.
Then my yelling stopped. The voices stopped and the images disappeared.
There was nothing. I took one last breath.
I felt myself falling. Down, down, into the black abyss where I would stay until someone loved me enough to bring me back.