Conant High School Junior Rianna Higgins finds it difficult to talk about her anxiety. So, she’s found a different way to express herself: poetry.

“The first time I had a panic attack

it lasted mere seconds that felt like hours,

the voices and images flashed through my head

Like and old movie reel playing on repeat”

Thus starts of Higgins long-form narrative poem, “Dark Sides of the Mind,” which was recently awarded an honorable mention in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Higgins, 17, originally wrote the poem for a class assignment asking for a personal narrative, based on her own experience with anxiety and panic attacks.

The poem describes what it feels like to be trapped by anxiety – the feeling of shakiness, unable to speak, the racing mind, and the sensation of your brain fighting against itself.

“I wrote it when I was having a rough time, over the course of several weeks,” Higgins said.

The poem is full of textual flourishes, using different fonts, formatting and text colors to try to convey as viscerally as possible what happens to her while she’s experiencing a panic attack, though Higgins said the poem is not “completely autobiographical,” and is meant to try to give a broader scope of what it feels like to deal with anxiety.

Higgins said she has dealt with a heightened anxiety level for a long time, but really began to feel its effects about a year and a half ago, which is when she had her first panic attack. She said this past year has been particularly hard, dealing with the forced isolation of COVID-19.

She said she wrote this particular poem right after a COVID-19 lockdown.

“It was right after a quarantine, and my grades had been dropping, and I found out I wasn’t able to see a lot of my family. There were just a lot of emotions stacked up, and they needed to get out somewhere,” Higgins said.

Higgins said she has tried her hand at poetry before, with short writings, but hadn’t attempted something on the same scale before writing “Dark Sides of the Mind,” and said it turned into an outlet for her.

“It helps. Writing gets my thoughts out. I have a hard time expressing myself when I’m talking. This way, I can work through it better for myself,” Higgins said. And, she said, it helped that those who read it, seemed to understand her better because of it. “After everyone had read is, and some had said, ‘I completely understand this,’ I realized other people can read this, and understand what I’m trying to say.”

Higgins said she’s become more involved in writing, and is currently working on a new poem, entitled “Shaky Bridge,” which has a more hopeful aspect – the idea that even if things feel uncertain now, that you can continue to move forward to a better future.

A link to Higgins’ full poem can be found at the Jaffrey-Rindge district website here: tinyurl.com/RiannaHiggins. The district included a warning for readers instructing them that the poem contains graphic elements and thematically depicts a first-person account of someone suffering from anxiety and panic attacks.