In The Midst Of Panic (732 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.79 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <murphydog5.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-11-03 18:31:24 EST
So I was sitting in my usual chair at the coffee shop and rolling cigarettes with my shaky fingers when Cody, the owner of the coffee shop, walked by and said "hey hey" and dipped his little fingers in to my tobacco pouch and jammed the wad in his lower lip. I said, "that's disgusting, Cody," and he sighed and carried on.
Under flakes of spilled tobacco, and under my shaking fingers, was my like tobacco-rolling table... it was a book. The name of the book was "Finding Serenity in the Age of Anxiety" and I'm half-way through and trying to entertain the various thoughts. You see, there are three different types of anxiety. You've got Natural, Sacred, and Toxic anxiety. Natural anxiety is the body and mind's response to like regular threats. Sacred anxiety is like asking the big big questions about what this is all about and so forth and feeling all anxious about it. And last, the Toxic version, is what happens when a human being has trouble dealing with the first two and stuffs it and then it turns in to poison and depression and self-doubt and low confidence and anger and not least of all these Panic Attacks. I've had a few. Words can't describe the terror of feeling like dying even if the sufferer isn't all hot on living anyway. You see, feeling like dying and not having any say at the time is just pure terror.
My hands were shaking because I'm controlling my body with various chemicals. I look down at my hands and stomach and feet and everything and I see all of this with my eyes and I think to myself "I'm in charge of you, mother fucker." So I drink fermented beverages when I'm feeling like down or too charged up and I charge myself up with roasted, ground, and percolated bean-water in the mornings to kill the effects of whatever transpired the evening before. In between I smoke cigarettes not to control anything specifically; that's just a hard-core addiction that I enjoy. Let's keep going.
The book is meant to help with my problems and it reads like other books on the market, read by special type readers looking for answers in a world with no answers. Here's the key, and it's repeated in all the other books too: trust yourself, love yourself, relax. I'm trying, I'm trying! Kinda hard, I say, to trust yourself and be like humble at the same time because no one has access to objective reality. We must, in the words of someone else, create our own reality and somehow convince ourselves to believe it. This sickens me. I don't know why.
So there I am, shaking, rolling smoke after smoke, thinking, watching two lovely young men mix drinks, trying to hold on to one thought without it fleeting away, when all of the sudden I feel more panic. I can't breathe, someone is choking me, and I feel like I'm looking down from the top of a skyscraper and losing my balance and like getting ready to fall. I brace my feet and suck in a few breaths and think to myself "don't control it, remember? The book, the book!" And all of the sudden, in the midst of panic, the sun poked through the clouds and lit up the whole place orange. I felt it's warmth. The panic immediately subsided and I knew what I had to do.
I grabbed one of the rolled cigarettes, brushed aside the loose flakes on my lap and sat up and grabbed my coffee cup, put the smoke in my lips, went outside and I put my foot against the brick and spun flint in to flame to light the smoke and breathed in and out and just stopped thinking and like connected to the whole world. I wasn't falling any more. The sun warmed me up on the inside and out. I didn't see other human beings as weird and lonely, a sure projection, but rather as people just like me.
As I was feeling these thoughts, a lone white gull waddled up next to me. It wasn't afraid, having surely known as I do just now that we're part of something bigger. It looked up at me and blinked and sort of bopped its head forward and back. I took a piece of bread from my back pocket and ripped it in to chunks and threw them next to my feet. Then a whole flock of lovely birds, all colors of the rainbow, came from like nowhere and circled around me. They were rust, tangerine, cobalt, periwinkle, and jet black. The birds, they trusted me. They ate my bread and we all rejoiced at this marvelous thing called like life.
A smile ripped accross my face and I blew smoke toward the heavens.
Murphy
User Reviews
Submitted by Luckylacquer (user info) at 2004-11-04 10:13:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I've felt this way before...the pit of the loneliness eating me alive from inside out. And yet a cigarette did not erase it from my mind and invoke a moment of clarity. Hence, only +1.
Submitted by TheSpook (user info) at 2004-11-04 08:33:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
you need a vacation
Submitted by professorfuckface (user info) at 2004-11-04 03:55:52 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by EchoBoxing (user info) at 2004-11-03 22:51:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
excellent
Submitted by someone (user info) at 2004-11-03 22:36:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Great, as usual.
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2004-11-03 22:09:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
YOURE BACK!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!
Submitted by great_angst (user info) at 2004-11-03 21:48:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Zoidberg (user info) at 2004-11-03 21:32:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Murphy is back! Again.
you should come back more often. Either way, Im sure I'll get to see plenty of you since Dubya was re-elected.
Assuming we get sent to the same gay concentration camp. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed for somewhere warm)
Submitted by D.O.A (user info) at 2004-11-03 20:04:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by foster (user info) at 2004-11-03 19:37:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jo_of_the_golden_P (user info) at 2004-11-03 19:36:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
more like a 1.5, I guess.
I liked it, anyway.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2004-11-03 19:31:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2004-11-03 19:29:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by brokenlizard534 (user info) at 2004-11-03 19:21:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by hidden101 (user info) at 2004-11-03 19:07:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
ok, dude. but i still want to talk to you on MSN when you get the chance.
Submitted by Murphy1844 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:58:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I'll write you an email...
Submitted by Murphy1844 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:57:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
But then I would compromise my imaginary class. I sink to PBR and no further. Actually, I really like PBR... makes me feel patriotic too.
Submitted by hidden101 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:55:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
you drank your cell phone bill? you know Steel Reserve is really cheap. it will get your drunk and you can still afford a cell phone.
damn, man, don't do what i was doing last year. talk to me on MSN tonight.
Submitted by Murphy1844 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:51:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I drank my cell phone bill, hidden. Murphydog5.at.hotmail.com. I've actually been meaning to talk with you for some reason.
How's the drinking?
Submitted by hidden101 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:50:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
give me a call tonight if you're not busy.
Submitted by Murphy1844 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:48:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Most of the time. If not bread than I usually carry fishing bait like worms.
Submitted by Murphy1844 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:47:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Shut the fuck up Wookie. It adds flavor. I know what I'm doing.
Submitted by big_wigger (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:47:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
you carry bread in your back pocket?
Submitted by Murphy1844 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:47:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
What's up, man! Haven't written with you in a while. Oh not that I'm all that exited, but you'd think so reading the exlamation point wouldn't you? :)
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:46:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I just wish you hadn't used "like" so much.
"feeling like down" "and like connected to the whole world" "and like getting ready to fall"
"came from like nowhere"
It kind of detracts...
Eh, whatever. This was good.
Submitted by DJMattB241 (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:40:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
MURPHY!!!!!!!!!!!
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:37:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Come back more often. Even though I don't like your older stuff, maybe you're turning a corner.
Submitted by comicbookguy (user info) at 2004-11-03 18:34:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
love your stuff man.