“If you’re truly dedicated to your work, then focus! There’s no room for ego.”

I hear office noises. Keys clicking, people sniffling and coughing. The steady rumble whooshing of the air circulating through the ceiling vents. When you subtract the sounds the humans make, it almost sounds like you’re inside a sea shell. The human made noises make me anxious. The door slams, someone opens the door, and it slams again. I jolt with startle. Somebody sneezes and it makes me pause, still like a deer caught in headlights.

I ate something today that caused me to have an asthmatic reaction. The phlegm and the coughing wouldn’t subside so I kept hitting the rescue inhaler over and over again. No patience, I have. I also have a cold, and took cold medicine today. In conjunction with the albuterol and pills, I got the jitters, uppers and shakes. For every action there is a reaction; guarantee, this one’s going to be a panic attack.

The debilitating seizure like pain, convulsion, freezing your guts and heart, I feel like my heart is burning and motionless; stuck. I can’t move. I want to cry, scream, but I choke it back, no noise. No sound. My face, from this resistance turns red. My eyes look empty, but at the same time full of fear, rage, confusion, and a subtle certainty that I’m the toughest nail in the world, and I will slam through anything put in my way. But still I can’t move and eventually the gasps and tears start to stream down my face.

It was the unfortunate event that this occurred at work, and I only had the woman’s restroom to retreat. Having a panic attack in front of others who know not what it is, or whom have never suffered from one, make me feel embarrassed. I feel like a weirdo here. Yet, when I think about the people that I don’t particularly like here, the first thing that springs to my mind is, “They’re weird.” Of course to me, weird is defined by being exhaustingly normal and the typical average personality; common. That sounds pretentious. Sometimes we all might be a little of that. Sometimes, there’s room for the ego to pull up a chair and stay for a drink.

I should be working at this moment, but I needed to write. Perhaps if only for the eyes and inner sound in my head, me myself and I, it’s soothing. I am sentimental. I am callous. I am full of love and dying to share it. I am mixed up and alive inside my own head, and meek to the world around me. I find resemblance in the heroine and the villain, the broken. What becomes of the broken hearted? They make top hits for Motown, music for your soul.

Jimmy Ruffin – What Becomes of the Brokenhearted