No Panic. No Fear.
A Poem by Makale‘a
The words bring an odd sort of quiet.
Like a deep breath after hyperventilating. Like turning the knob to warm halfway through an ice cold shower.
The funny thing about faking it till you make it is that it works.
I never say this magic spell when I really mean it.
It’s a little white lie I repeat to myself when the world is closing in and the room is emptying of oxygen and my knee starts jumping as I crack my knuckles to bring about some sort of catharsis that never really arrives and panic and fear themselves are not just knocking but pounding, slamming their bodies at the door like Nicholson in the Shining.
No panic. No fear.
A quiet ritual. A pentagram on the floor with candles aflame, summoning an imposter to take the wheel.
Is it an imposter?
At what point do we “make it”?
How many breaths does it take to convince the mind that the body is calm? How many smiles to convince the soul that joy is genuine?
I am both the actor and the audience, the sorcerer and the charlatan. My reflections splinter, fragments of who I am and who I pretend to be merging and separating like oil and water.
This ritual of self-deception becomes a mirror maze, every turn showing a different face, each one claiming to be the true self.
In this dance of identities, who leads and who follows? Is the calm a mask I wear or a skin that grows over time?
Transformation is not a lightning strike but a slow erosion, the jagged edges of fear smoothed into the calm façade of confidence.
But beneath the surface, the bedrock remains, the ancient anxieties fossilized in the core of my being.
No panic. No fear.
This mantra is a spell, not of magic, but of willpower, binding my chaos within a circle of resolve.
Control is the grail I seek, a treasure elusive as mist, slipping through fingers that tremble despite their steady appearance.
To transform is to conquer, yet who am I once the battle is won? Am I the warrior or the battlefield, the victor or the vanquished?
The desire for transformation is a yearning for peace, for a silence where the echoes of panic no longer reverberate.
But as I stand at the threshold, the door still quakes, fear and panic relentless in their siege.
No panic. No fear.
I whisper, louder now, a declaration to the storm within.
The imposter dissolves, not vanquished, but absorbed, becoming part of the whole, an ally in the endless quest for self.
For in this struggle, I find not defeat, but a deeper truth: that to fake it is to forge it, each act of will a stroke of the chisel carving the statue of my soul.
At what point do we “make it”? Perhaps it is not a point, but a path, the journey of becoming, each step a blending of the real and the imagined, the feared and the fearless.
No panic. No fear.
