An Anxiety

unable to do something so simple as drive
but the car needed to be driven
and I was preternaturally aware of the asphalt
and the lines that separated me from others
and then the first Mack truck drove past

and oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck keep the wheel straight don’t speed don’t go too fast around this corner you can’t have a panic attack right now you can’t throw up right now you can’t stop breathing right now you can’t slap yourself in the face right now you are moving fifty five miles per hour and this car weighs three thousand pounds you have to keep breathing Datta Dayadhvam Damyata Datta Datta Datta datta datta now you can stop the car now you can go vomit in the nearby dumpster now you can hit yourself now you can hold your breath now you can start breathing again datta. Datta. Datta. Thirty more minutes in the car to go home. Datta. Datta.

Now you can shake on the floor. Now you can take your clothes off and slap yourself in the face as hard as you need to until you stop crying because there is nothing left of you but the headache. Datta. Datta. Now you can try to cover your shift tonight. You will not get a raise this month but there is always September. Three seconds of breathing in, five seconds of breathing out. Don’t rock back and forth so much.

Of course after that I got very drunk so that I would not be so ashamed of myself.
Tomorrow I will pretend that this never happened and I will get in the car and go to work.