It starts out small

Something completely mundane and unnoteworthy 

A smell, a sound, a snippet of a sentence, a very specific image

Something that would never catch my attention, but for some reason it does

That’s usually when it kicks off

Heart starts pounding

Head starts hurting

A strange mix of fear and annoyance

I feel like I’m going to vomit, which usually isn’t far from the truth

The world around me somehow both fades away and jumps out in hyper detail

Time seems to slow down and speed up at the same time

All I want to do is close my eyes and ignore it, but that just makes me even more sick to my stomach

Everything begins to snowball

It feels like the end of the world

And then

It’s over

It feels like nothing even happened

I shake myself off and continue on with my day

I feel like it should faze me more, and yet it doesn’t

Most of the time I simply forget it even happened, and even when I remember, it feels hazy, like a distant dream

If someone has a panic attack, and nobody remembers it, did it ever happen?