girl afraid

  I am delicate. I have ptsd and a hair trigger with stimulants. It takes me many, many times of repeated behavior before I learn that certain things just do not work for me. I'm not sure why I feel the compulsion to try some things again and again, ignoring the past. I did a little work today regarding coffee and my love hate relationship with black gold. And by "work" I mean that I foolishly had a latte' then had the first intensely physical panic attack I've had in months. When I get a physical panic attack, I'm short of breath, get tingly fingers and toes, my head pounds, my heart races and my vision gets blurry. I become irrationally convinced that I'm going to faint or have a heart attack due to some undiagnosed mystery ailment. If I'm in public I have to get to a "safe" place (my house, my car, a trusted friends) It can go on for hours, hard or with peaks and valleys. Afterwards I feel completely depleted and wrung out. It's awful. It wasn't worth the latte', that's the truth.

   After months of intense, hard wintering (ie: constant rain and gloom, slow sales at the shops-so more $$$ stress than usual) the veil of darkness is beginning to lift and I got a little excited for the actual spring start which is only a couple days away. After 2 weeks of avoiding coffee and black tea the coffee I had today amped me out severely and I felt superhuman for about 15 minutes... then I started sweating, thinking weirdo thoughts and feeling like I needed a horse tranquilizer.

 I'll get it eventually. I'm glad I have my chill out/safe cds in the car. I sat quietly, shut my eyes, concentrated on my breath and imagined long ago Versailles full of ladies in lovely pastel gowns with fancy, party hair.

 Years ago, these kinds of attacks used to send me racing off to the nearest ER, sure I was on my deathbed. Now I know it's in my mind and I'm getting it, slowly... It passed quickly and I was able to calm down, eat something and get on with my day. It was a real triumph to not let a damn cup of coffee derail my entire day. As bad as I felt in the moment, it was nice that those kind of freak outs are no longer common place.
  Now, there is laundry to fold, bedtime poetry to read and we are all super excited because tomorrow we're adding a special new friend to the family... Can you guess? xo m