Today’s the day

Today’s the day.

Today’s the day I understand the depths to which my highs can plunge me. This morning dawned bright and early, at least early enough for my current routine. Now, the rain falls.

I feel dull. Dull and dreary. The cheery jangle of music underlined by the relentless drum of this bass is pounding me to dust. The edges of my perception crumble, I crumple into myself – whole, but diminished. My mind has gone blank again, and as I write these lines I can feel the tears trickling up my throat, my breath wrung out and pressing down awkwardly over my chest until a shallow stream of air is all I can manage. This is a panic attack.

Anxiety, my friend. I know you. I name you. There’s no need to stand on formalities between us, no need to tip-toe around and balance shyly over my shoulder, half-tempted to sneak by unannounced – unbidden. We understand each other, you and I. You believe there are things best left undisturbed, undusted, too weighty and unwieldy to bring down from the attic of my mind and expose to the bright light of reason and self-consciousness. You argue that these things, the iron that binds, the words that carve, the clear-eyed mirror and its shifting frame, these things are too fragile to observe and hold and handle without corroding them and the dust that crumbles – it comes in drifting flakes of rust and pain and anger and confusion stirring up the air from my breath. You see, I know you. Trapped in place, held by an unknowable hand, the ancestral instinct of freeze and wait, wait and the danger will subside, wait for the release, the signal that comes, that must come. The signal won’t come. Anxiety, I won’t claim that my tools, knowledge, a sense of familiarity and understanding, a creeping awareness – these do not give me mastery or might over you. A pervading exhaustion of the mind is what gives you mastery over me. So here I lay, in your thrall – I admit, freely – I give myself to you. I wait. The signal won’t come. I marshal my thoughts to orderly chaos and surrender my fear to the unknown. I have no desire to fight, you see. Slowly, gradually, ever so slightly – I gather my energy, I feel my strength dam up the flow until such a time as calm returns. Now – soon – any minute – I will move. I will transmute paralysis into motion. By the strength of my will, so mote it be.

And the rain falls.