Page 54 of Our Little Moments

Better. Better. This is getting better.

“Name two things you can smell.”

Breathing again, I try to focus on the smell.

I can’t sense anything.

My heartbeat keeps breathing hard against my chest. “Umm.”

“Two things you can smell, Stella. Just two,” she encourages.

I inhale again and recognize the smell of the dirt we’re sitting on along with . . . trees?

Yes, trees and dirt. That’s two.

“Trees and dirt,” I say without rushing.

I take a breath again, and it gets stuck in my throat at the end.

I can breathe, I can breathe, I can breathe.

“You’re almost there, Stella. One thing you can taste. Just one.”

Blood. It feels like I swallowed sand, and I can’t taste anything other than blood.

“Blood,” I reply, and my heartbeat is steady again. It’s still faster than usual, but calmer than a few seconds ago. Or I guess minutes ago?

What if hours went by?

“There you go,” Hazel says, a proud grin on her face.

Gratitude overwhelming me, I throw my arms around her and wrap her in a tight hug. She grips me back just as tightly.

Silence wraps us both, until I break it to ask, “How did you know what to do?”

“It’s not hard to tell when someone is having a panic attack when you’ve been having them since you were five.” She sighs heavily, and I wrap my arms around her tighter.

“Things eventually got really, really bad. I couldn’t go through a day without having a panic attack, which left me drained all the time. I went to a healer in town to help me. He gave me different tips to get through panic attacks. This one basically helps to ground yourself and drag your head out of your thoughts and back into the moment. It’s not easy to do alone, but with someone guiding you, it’s a bit easier.”

“So you managed to do it on your own? Every time?”

“No.” She shakes her head against my shoulder. “Nate and I often get panic attacks. So, we decided to stick together. I’d guide him when he had one, and he’d guide when I had one.”

I smile. Those two really stuck together. “What happened when you couldn’t be together? Like if you were in class or at home?”

“We never left each other.”

“Did you ever have one when you were alone?” I ask quietly.

“Yes.” Her voice cracks, and my heart cracks along with it. “Many, many times.” She wraps herself tightly around me, and I feel her shaking. Tears fill my eyes. “I . . . I thought I was dying. Every time. It took hours to recover from one panic attack, and I had several every day. I was always tired, yet always anxious. They were the worst days of my life.”

She starts crying, and I hold her. I can barely keep my emotions under control. After a few minutes of gut-wrenching silence, she unwraps herself from me and wipes away her tears.

“But you get through it,” she says as she gets up from the ground. Hazel holds out her hand to help me up, and I smile. Her eyes shine with quiet confidence. “Those days are hard to get through, and it seems like they never end, but they always do. Hard times don’t last forever.”

Hazel looks at me hesitantly before telling me, “I think you should see a therapist when we get back. I think you’ve bottled a lot of things up and that it could do you a lot of good to have someone who can give you tools to manage your overthinking, panic attacks, anxiety and your expectations of yourself.”

If Hazel said the exact same words to me months ago, I would have denied it all. Said I have it all under control, that I don’t have anxiety, that I’m “stronger” than that. But I’m slowly learning that I do expect too much of myself and that I am hard on myself. It’s a pattern I’ve had for a long time that I don’t quite know how to stop.

---