Andrea Gibson - Ode To The Public Panic Attack lyrics

You find me at the coffee shop
At the movies
Buying comfort food in the grocery store

You find me on dates
Which is terrible, because on dates
I really try to appear––dateable

You found me at Disneyland
In line for The Little Mermaid
Slow Moving Clam Ride

You found me at parties
So often I stopped celebrating
My own birthday

You found me on an airplane
In the arms of the medic
After the plane stopped on the runway

And turned around to let me off
Don’t worry, the medic said
It’s just a panic attack

As if that would comfort me
To be told I am the enemy
To know my body is it's own stalker

Last week, you found me on stage
In the middle of a poem
Chewed the hairs on the back of my neck
Until I couldn’t hear the words
Coming out of my mouth
Until I wasn’t even there

Do you know how hard it is to read a poem
When you’re in another state
Googling, sudden onset asthma
Or how many bugs are in the human body?

Is it possible to be eaten alive
While an audience is all eyes asking
Are OK? Are you OK? Are you OK?

No, never

But, I am creative, so when I can’t breathe
I tell myself, It’s fine

That’s just my heart
Giving my sternum a high five
Fifty times a second

After the show I said to my friend
That was so humiliating
Did I look like a goat
Giving birth in a mall? Yes, she says
But also like someone who had fallen
Though an iced over lake and was screaming
To find the hole they fell through
To take a breath

I think every good artist
Makes their audience uncomfortable
I’d hoped to do that with my politics

And not my body flailing
Like the about-to-be-dead-girl
In a teenage horror flick

My own spine curling into the claw
That strips me down to my
Day of the week panties
And it’s always Doomsday

If you’ve never had a panic attack
There’s a good chance you’ve been an ass
To someone who has

It makes sense that JUST RELAX
Would feel like a helpful thing to say
If oxygen has never been over your head

If your body has never become it's own corset
At the restaurant I say, I
Have a small bladder
Because it’s less awkward than saying
My parachute

Didn’t open when I left the house
And I prefer the privacy of bathroom stalls
When falling towards my death
At the speed of utter darkness

What pisses me off
Is that this ever got misnamed weakness
Do you know how much courage it
Takes to live through this shit?
To know the apocalypse is on the other side

Of the front door, and still–– I reach
For the knob

To step towards the terror it's promised jaw
To scrape your boots on the welcome mat
To tell yourself fear
Is the seat of fearlessness
Even when you’re falling through the
Ice that is never
Been weakness that is the bravest thing I
Have ever done in my life