It felt like my chest was having a jackhammer plow through it. Like I'd swallowed acid and it was eating me from the inside out. My actual being was crumbling, crumbling like the Twin Towers on September 11th. And there was nothing I could do about it, nothing at all. No one was going to stop my fall, there was no safety net there to catch me. So I just sat still and let myself be destroyed while salty raindrops ran down my face and splashed into the pond in my lap. My chest constricted until I could not breathe, then expanded so quickly that I could do nothing but gasp. Everything around me was fuzzy; the only clear things were the emotions flowing through my veins. I was numb to everything except the ice cold pain penetrating every pore in my body. I couldn't think, couldn't see, couldn't breathe, and I did not really want to. What was the point, when I would only breathe polluted air, see h*ll, and think of a time I could never return to? When I drank water the drops only came faster, falling so hard that when they hit the ground drops bounced up, returning from whence they had come. My whole being was disintegrating, and all I could do was curl into the fetal position and wish for the sweet darkness that accompanied unconsciousness.