can I ask you all a question?
okay. here it is:
so, hypothetically of course
you’re riding on a bus, and seemingly out of nowhere you’re overwhelmed by panic
which isn’t uncommon, so whatever,
you pull the stop cord
and as your foot hits the ground
relief flows through your body, you’re okay.
so you start walking, and you’ve got a pretty long walk ahead of you, but it’s kind of nice outside,
what a nice day for a walk, you think.
unfortunately, though
the street under your feet
unbeknownst to you,
becomes a bridge, so now
you’re walking across a bridge
and that bridge
doesn’t have a sidewalk
and you have to walk in the bike lane
and it’s really long
and when you get somewhere around the halfway point
you feel like you’re about to have a panic attack.
what the hell would you do?
I feel like this is something I should have thought about before.
I remember when I was a kid, my dad wanted to walk across
the Beacon bridge for Father’s Day.
I took about 5 steps and immediately turned around and walked back to the car.
this time, though - I was in the middle, right in the middle.
back the same as forward.
really, this is a serious question
what the hell would you do?
do you just sit down?
do you call an ambulance?
do you call a friend to calm you down?
do you jump over the edge, the water being closer than either side?
well, take a second to think about it, and then I’ll tell you what I did.
are you thinking?
come on, it could happen to you!
okay, this is what I did.
I used my left hand to shield the left side of my face
like the kid in my high school used to do,
everyone made fun of him for it.
then, i found a piece of gum in my bag, unwrapped it, and chewed it.
i thought to myself, i’m going forward. i’m going to go forward.
i thought about how fucking ridiculous i must look to everyone.
or if they even noticed how ridiculous i felt like i looked, i probably looked unremarkable, actually.
i started wondering if i could vomit and walk at the same time. is that possible?
because i sure as hell can’t stop to vomit, it’d be an interruption,
and i need to get to the other side as quick as possible, without interruption!
i wondered if i could sit down on the bridge without people thinking I was preparing to commit suicide.
i thought about the movie Strangers in Good Company and how the woman in the film
who has really bad anxiety, doubles the difficulty of her situation
by staying in the bus
because she’s scared to walk through the woods,
but then at night, she gets scared of the dark
and is forced to walk through the woods, in the dark, alone.
my stomach started doing circus routines, slowly crawling up my throat,
wanting to display the tricks it had practiced inside of me.
i would take a step, and with one foot on the ground, i’d feel like i couldn’t breathe
or that I might throw up
and I’d have to stop, and breathe, in through my nose, out through my mouth.
(breathing for everyone)
which of course is a bunch of bullshit when you can’t breathe in the first place, right?
so instead i just forgot about all of that and walked quicker with tiny breaths.
quicker,
with tiny breaths.
that got tinier
and tinier
until I couldn’t breathe anymore,
so I jumped off the bridge,
my body in full free fall
limbs kicking, swimming in or on air, I’m not really sure how to say that
until finally
I came crashing down on someone riding a jet-ski, trying to enjoy their 4th of July weekend.
and I died.
nah, I’m just kidding.
i got to the other side.