This morning on the bus, I barely missed suffering a panic attack very much like a feeling of physical confinement, the walls closing in. But it was not caused by a literal constriction of space. It was the surrounding pressure of self-absorption and stupidity oozing from the people around me. It’s like suffocation, like a sense that being so surrounded is cutting off the flow of breathable air. It continues at work, as it continues at home. It’s no joke when I proclaim that I do not play well with others. Because the experience of “others” very much resembles being smothered, being buried alive.
