So I do army cadets at my school, and today I was feeling shit. I don’t know why, I don’t know for what reasons, but I was down today. For the past 2 and a half months, or really since my mate killed himself, I’ve been having panic attacks worse than I did for the 2 years prior. They’ve been worse and more frequent and today I got the worst one I’ve ever had. I was sitting in English and stopped breathing. I knew what was happening and asked the teacher to get a drink and he let me go walk around for a bit to calm down. That’s a normal one. After school I had cadets and we had the first parade of our cadet year which is famous for being the recruits’ first parade and it’s in the hot Australian summer. Every year 30+ kids faint. This year was more chill. Only a few faintings, but half way through the parade, I stopped breathing again. I felt as if someone was crushing my chest in a vice. I couldn’t feel my face. Couldn’t feel my hands. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t breathe. I stayed standing for 10 minutes not wanting to interrupt the parade until a kid a few sections down fainted backwards like a dead plank. After 5 more minutes I finally decided this was serious and I took a knee which is what we are told to do if we need medic attention. I was taken over to the medic area and finally managed to squeeze out that I was having a panic attack. They gave me a cup of water and then left me there alone to tend to others but soon it became the case that it was just me and a girl who had tripped and sprained her wrist. She was crying and carrying on over her wrist while I was silently trying to focus on not dying a few feet away from her. The entire platoon, and I mean entire platoon of medics (20-30 people) surrounded this one girl to make sure she was comforted and contented while only one kid stayed with me. He was super sweet and stayed next to me telling me how he went through the same things and knew how tough they were. I got so light headed from the attack I passed out in my chair and when I came to, people were still crowding around this girl, and still I had only my one new friend from medics.

I guess I could be misreading the situation, but it just seems like people didn’t care about me because they’d rather help the girl. I also admit that with the emotions I’m experiencing right now, that could contribute to my misreading but what do you all think?