I'm calling to mind my training

It comes at all the wrong times. A good talk pops up. I engage with enthusiasm. Somewhere in the air in the pause for even a breath, it breathes through me. Fills me with a desperation but nothing to run from, no battle to prepare for. Not even a simple task to be tended to.

I can't speak then. Can't move. The dread, the clenching teeth, my own last breath lingers as a possibility. It doesn't seem far off. The worst part is when I look at them, they're not there. In my eyes maybe, but every other sense says "all is lost".

Just like that. No solution, no trial to win. Just everything gone. And then me alone. With it.

I should be using the glimmers of good things, beloved things, to keep it at bay. But it takes them.

At night, in the whir of fans and the thick cold air, I scream. Like someone not quite human. In the dark of the store, locked in, alone, double, triple checking everything is done. I need to scream. To wail. It's maybe one of the few things that gives me a moment of release.

But it still waits. It sits with me at night, until my body finally gives in. And I feel it there sometimes.

I want my life back. Sometimes I can't even remember when I didn't feel this way. Maybe I never have.

She's made moments so beautiful and perfect it had to lay down somewhere it couldn't touch me. Freddie gives me so much joy, so many moments of it.

And to my rainbow family-

There’s a specific kind of fear I haven’t seen named quite right, so I'm naming it for myself:

Apeirophobia is the closest real word — fear of infinity, of things with no beginning or end, but that’s not exactly how it feels for me.

It's more like:

'edge-loss anxiety'

or

'frame-of-reference collapse'

I'm not afraid of space, or aliens, or exploring the unknown. I want that. I want the tardis, I want new worlds, I want to learn everything.

What I can’t stand is the moment where there’s no “edge” anymore.

No outside, no container, no place to stand and look at it.

Like my brain reaches for a wall and there just… isn’t one

It used to feel like falling apart.

Like if i thought about it too long, something in me would snap.

But at some point, I stopped trying to solve it, and started letting it exist without needing a boundary, and that changed everything.

Now it’s less panic, more awe. Less “I’m losing it,” more “this is bigger than me, and that’s okay”

I don’t need the universe to have edges.

I'm not sure I could ever fully describe the best one, but it still comes up sometimes and grabs me so tightly, exactly like the perfect embrace that it was.

Right now, tonight, I can appreciate this very moment while knowing it can't last. And tonight, I don't want it to.

I have about 1 hour and 22 minutes until the end of my shift. Just right now, for however few minutes I have until I get anxious about a looming to-do list, I'm appreciating the silence, the darkness that's only interrupted by the lights under a bay of gas pumps, and the passing cars on the highway.

I'm staring at the empty space between bays of pumps, and reveling in my favorite retail fantasy.

A swarm of people. Not for me, but for something they've almost forgotten. Shambling, sickly, but always looking past me. At first, they do what they would've done *before it all*. They struggle, but they make it, in and out with their vices and treats.

It's a holiday, so I'm slightly avoiding things. A lot of the same problems are still haunting me this year, so much so I've felt raw every waking minute. Haunted, boxed in. It feels like everything and everyone is *touching* me all the time. I function as best as possible, but inside I'm screaming. Locked up and tormented.

It comes out with pain. Pain that, even with chronic pain for most of my life, is almost unbearable.

Occipital neuralgia is a term I had never heard until recently, but I've felt it time and time again. At least I have a term for it now. To name it takes some of it's hold, but it holds me hostage anyway. I've had 2 days of some relief after 2 weeks of flare ups. It takes me out.

I'm the girl who always has a ponytail or bun, unless I'm feeling like spicing it up. I miss having bright colors, but am just catching up on finances. Anyway...these past 2 weeks the pain from "ON" has been so intense that even putting my hair up is agonizing.

I'm a mess.

The family medicine doctor I've been glad for have for a few years has suddenly begun questioning and doubting me. I'm blaming the system for now, but I'm still angry about it.

I'm 40, and constantly suffering hot flashes. She ordered some tests, and declared that it's not perimenopause because levels were normal. Despite the fact that that can't be relied on when I have a birth control implant (periods have always been very heavy & painful, she was the one to say "why suffer" and gave me the procedure), so those measurements are not going to be applicable. Not to mention my mother went through menopause very early, and had pre-cancerous cells that led to her needing a hysterectomy.

Health aside, personal relationships are tense, weird, and with all parties involved, no one wants to talk about anything. I'm guessing my way through and making so much effort but I still have no idea where I stand.

I'm lonely. I'm hurting. I'm angry.