It was the year

 It was the year I had a panic attack for the first time in my life,when I thought for a moment that I could not move my legs.My blood pressure went up so high, I thought I would die.Apparently thinking that you will die is not a valid cause of death.And when I told the handsome Middle Eastern doctor what had happened,he guessed that it had happened before.He didn't give me a prescription guaranteeing it wouldn't happen again.Men will exploit you, they will harm you, my mother told me that night under the yellow light of the kitchen table.I remember the light on her face, her skin looked so yellow when she said this.It was the year I talked in abstractions about real thingsand talked real about abstractions.It was the year my dreams died of a disease.They vanquished and reality spray painted its hue intograffiti on my soul, in a language I have yet to learn.It was the year there were those who would say long sentences to meand I would not remember their words but only the shapes their lips formed.I could taste the spit on their tongues.I never cut myself, threw up food, or took too many pills like some girls I knew.I just sat there sometimes and didn't move, not even to breathe.Although apparently breathing was happening without my written consent or a prescription from the doctorwho wrote me the script for chill pills.I took the chilling seriously, really seriously.It became my job, my profession, no my career, to chill.For a while, I did nothing else.This is the year I woke up from a deep slumber.I had put myself to sleep, not with drugs, but the sedative of a sanctuary.My bed had become my home, I needed to nest there for a while.This is the moment I look back at my journeyand realize that the world is going on here with or without me participating.It is the year I decide there is no timeI have not lost anything, time is not something we owntime is a vessel through which we see that we are existingbut it is not the measurement of that existence.It is only a window.It was about time I opened that window.Who knew there was so much air to breathe?It was the year or was it the lifetime, that I forgot I existed.This is the moment, I remember.nina