How does that make you feel?

"I don't know."

But I do know. I know all too well how that makes me feel. In fact, in those moments of panic, all my feelings morph into a second skin, wrapping me up in a malleable lump of a mess, twisting my insides like only a bad stomach infection could. In the throes of such panic, my body listens to my misguided mind, dancing tossing and turning and twitching and tensing to its increasingly alarming tunes, while my elevated heart rate keeps the rhythm. It feels like the end of the world, at least my world, and so the dimming light forming a vignette in my peripheral vision only seems like a natural process that ends in my fainting. 

But it does not get there. It never does. This may sound like relief, like a crisis averted, or misery cut short, but it's anything but that. This forms the fertile ground in which the next panic attack can germinate, take root, grow & branch out.

So when asked how they make me feel, I want to simply say, "tired", but that sounds too vague, too broad and too benign. I often want to say more, break into details and nuances and complexities and contradictions - but I can't, for my words fail me when I need them the most. Even if I did find the right words, they would sound completely hollow to someone who hasn't experienced it first-hand. Those who do experience it and can understand how it feels, seldom speak up.

How can I, then, answer the question "How does that make you feel?"?

"Alone" is the best I can manage.

Love and light,

Abhishek G

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