It started with the fluorescent lights. Or maybe it was the sound of the scanner beeping over and over. Or maybe it was nothing at all — which is the cruellest part of panic disorder: sometimes there is no reason, no trigger you can point to and say, "There. That's the villain."
I was third in line. Two people ahead of me, a basket full of ordinary Tuesday evening groceries, and then — nothing about me was ordinary anymore. My heart launched into a gallop I had not asked for. The edges of my vision thickened like fog rolling in off a night sea. My hands, resting on the cart handle, became someone else's hands.
This was my fourteenth panic attack in two months. I had counted. I had begun to count everything — steps from my bed to the bathroom, seconds between one inhale and the next, days since I had last felt entirely like myself.
I put the basket down. I walked outside. I stood on the pavement under a pale winter sky and I breathed, not because I wanted to perform some wellness ritual, but because it was the only thing my body remembered.
What I want to tell you — whoever is reading this while their own heart is being unreasonable — is that walking out of that line was not a failure. It was the most courageous thing I did that January. You are allowed to leave. You are allowed to step outside. You are not broken; your nervous system is simply misfiring an alarm in an empty room.
Panic attacks are terrifying precisely because they feel so physical, so real. The racing heart, the shortness of breath, the sense of unreality — these are genuine bodily sensations. They are not imagined. But they are also not dangerous. That distinction took me a long time to truly believe, and it is one of the most important things I have ever learned about my own mind.
If you are in the middle of one right now, please hear this: you will get through it. You always have. And each time you do, you are building evidence — quiet, cellular evidence — that you are stronger than the fear.