Transition State

I'm in a place between being overwhelmingly broken and overwhelmingly fixed, which makes no sense at all.  But that's how it is.  I'll wake up in a panic.  I know I've written about this before, but not in a while, because it's been a while since it's happened.  It's the sort of panic you can't shake.  You wake up and everything is peaceful for a second and then life crashes over you like a wave.  It breaks all over you and you curl up and shake because suddenly the thought of getting up to face the world is the most terrifying thing ever.  So it's not so much waking up in a panic as being accosted by panic the second my brain begins to register thoughts.

That experience renders the rest of the morning useless, because I wander the house like a terrified ghost, trying to find ways to occupy myself but unable to concentrate on anything.  I can't get work done and I can't find anything distracting enough to do.  I've spent a lot of time just walking from window to window lately, trying to see if maybe I would find something to get my attention.  Or maybe I'd just be able to drown myself in nostalgia for long enough to shake the fear.

Based on that description, I'm pretty sure it sounds like I need serious mental help.  Something is clearly wrong with me, right?  But that's the weird thing.  In that when I do eventually calm down, usually because of something mundane like the need to buy ink for my ancient printer or figuring out taxes, I'm more okay than I've been in a while.

When that happens, all of my doubt vanishes.  The self-confidence I never really had seems to make this brief and empowering appearance and suddenly I know, with more certainty than I've ever known anything before, that I'll be okay.  I stop thinking in hypothetical situations and beating myself up over aspects of my life I can't control and everything just makes perfect sense.  I can see what my life is going to be like in a few years, and I am 99% confident that I'm right about it.

Maybe I really have just lost it.  Maybe I'm actually a psychopath and this is the psychotic break that's going to turn me into a serial killer.  The fact that I seriously considered that a possibility for about ten seconds does nothing to comfort me about my reasoning abilities.  It's still morning, which might explain why my hands are shaking (I promise, it's not the cold) and I can't make sense of anything.  I have no idea what's going on with me.  Which, oddly enough, isn't scaring me.  Or maybe the fear from this is nothing compared to the panic that's already busy devouring me.  We're just going to pretend that everything is just fine until I know what to do with myself.  That sounds like a brilliant idea.