By midday, your hands are doing it. The tremor. A cup of coffee rattles against its saucer. A pen skates off the page. You press your palms flat against the cool wood of the desk, but the wood only learns to tremble with you. This is what they fear in you—not the scream, but the frequency . The way a woman’s panic can tune the very air to a different key.
Then it drops into the chest, where it nests between the ribs. It has no name yet. The doctors would call it wandering womb , an old ghost of a diagnosis, as if the body’s own longing could be a kind of demon. But you know better. It is simply the truth that would not fit into the silence.
Afterward, there is the shame. The cold washcloth on the neck. The apology you do not owe anyone. You will be told you are too much . But in the quiet echo of the room, after the shaking stops, you know a secret: Hysteria is not a flaw. It is the language of a body that finally refused to lie. Hysteria
In the waiting room, you sit perfectly still. Your spine is a ruler. Your ankles are crossed. You smile when the receptionist calls your name. But behind your teeth, a choir is screaming. It is the sound of every errand you ever ran on four hours of sleep. The sound of every calm down whispered into your ear like a lullaby for a bomb.
And for one terrifying, glorious moment—you were the most honest thing in the room. By midday, your hands are doing it
The world pulls back like a curtain. Your skin becomes a single, raw nerve. You can feel the spin of the planet. You can hear the blood moving in your own temples—a roaring, oceanic tide. You are not broken. You are too open . Too alive. The sob that finally breaks free is not grief. It is a release valve for a pressure that has been building since girlhood.
It begins not in the throat, but in the hinge of the jaw. A tiny, metallic vibration, like a trapped fly buzzing against a windowpane. You ignore it. You have been taught to ignore it. A pen skates off the page
The attack, when it comes, is not a collapse. It is a clarity .