It starts with a sort of buzzing, vibrating feeling in my skin. I'm not actually shaking. I repeatedly hold my hand out to prove this fact to myself, as if as long as I am not really physically shaking, then everything is just fine. Somehow feeling it without being able to see it is more comfortable. Safer. I'm not really losing it; it's all in my head. Ha. As if that phrase holds any comfort to me anymore. It is things "only in my head" that have caused me the most trouble and pain.
Emotionally I feel fine. The sun is shining, it is warm outside, and my week is full of scheduling wonders like dinner with friends on Wednesday and a massage on Tuesday. And yet, something is off, and it is starting to make me nervous. I check again to see if I can hold my hand out steady. I wonder why every nerve ending in my arms and hands is tingling and firing at once, and how this is not showing on my outside. I'm positive this is what it would feel like to have a thousand ants marching on the inside of my skin.
I wish I could crawl into bed and wrap myself tightly in a blanket and take a short nap. I know that would help, but I can't because I'm at work. I take some papers to the scanner to try and get some easy mindless work done while I pull myself together. Standing at the scanner I alternately feel like fainting or running laps around the floor. I feel like the world is twisting my top half one way and my bottom half the other way, like a cosmic "snake bite". I want to scream, or run, or cry, or hit something, or just do something, anything, to get rid of this energy. I see it in my mind as an electric charge building up in my body, making me glow-in-the-dark bright. If someone told me the energy buildup could be seen from space I would only be surprised that it took them this long to notice.
I close my office door, turn on my calming play list on my iPhone, and take a series of deep breaths as I press the heals of my hands over my eyes. I will my heart to please, please, please slow down. I bounce my legs up and down, trying unsuccessfully to lower the volume of the buzzing in my body. Tears leak out around my hands, still covering my eyes. I notice that I'm nearly hyperventilating and again concentrate on slowing my breathing. I know I should take my panic meds, but I'm just so sick of needing pills to stop this. I just got myself off having to take the panic medication every day, and currently view every "as needed" dose as a slip towards returning to that level of reliance, that level of numbness. I don't want that.
But I don't want this either.
