Speed bumps

Every time I've had a major "breakdown", I could look back and see signs of it growing. However, I've never really been able to recognize them while it's happening.

Signs usually look like:

Feelings of physiological stress

Panic attacks that wake me from sleep

Being really busy

Text messages to friends saying things like "I'm holding up," or "feeling off but doing OK" when they ask how I am

... probably some others I'm forgetting right now.

Well, it happened again last week. It wasn't so much a breakdown as a "speed bump." The signs were all there; I mean, just look back a few weeks. I literally wrote "I'm busy" as a post. Now it reads to me as if I was trying to justify the busy-ness to myself.

I have no idea what's actually going on. It's not like I can plug my activity into an equation and say, "yup, my body is going to hate that!" Usually when I start to teeter into relapse, things are actually really good. I feel active, energetic, happy, strong. But there's also this feeling that something is not quite right, like I'm tempting fate by being "normal." I can't use the world as a yardstick at all; what most people would see as a healthy, full, happy life can result in bad outcomes for me.

After a busy but wonderful start to the year, I started having panic attacks at night again. I hadn't had any in a long time. After a few of these, one night I snorted awake from sleep thinking "that was a funny feeling." And then I had this profound feeling of overwhelming fear. Not a panic attack; it was like being pulled back into a past time when I was suffering immensely. It felt exactly like I was back there again, physiologically. All this time my mind is looking at the situation like, "hmmn, I guess this is happening now."

(I'm always interested to see how television shows portray "traumatic flashbacks." They're always so... visual. Mine never are; I experience the "fear" entirely in the body.)

Anyways, the next week or so was difficult, but I took it slowly. Having drifted through near-extinction not so long ago, it was disappointing but familiar to be living in day-by-day measures of suffering again. The world of unpleasant possibilities re-opened: Will I stop sleeping entirely? Maybe! Will I feel like I'm dying? Well, who knows. Let's just get through today as best we can.

And, wouldn't you know it, I had a good day or two near the end of the week. That is like, lightning speed for me. Often times these "setbacks" have taken months to transform.

So, not perfect. I saw the signs, but felt like things were good and that I should keep going. I stumbled into the muck, but it feels like it was a fleeting muck. Who knows, next week may be awful. But I don't think so.

And it's trite, but these forays into suffering do make the lighter times seem so much more enjoyable. Life is good outside the pit, when we can manage it.