So I cancelled my Tuesday class. Slept 19 hours straight (I woke up to talk with my partner for a half hour, then slept more). On Wednesday I went to the store for treat-t0-myself-Naked-juice-smoothies (I prefer the green), chicken noodle soup, and dayquil/nyquil. I began my regimen.
On Thursday I taught.
Friday morning, when my exams were to begin, I woke up, took the dayquil, made some tea, and told myself "You only have to work for three hours, then you can nap." And I did. Between naps, I wrote. It felt luxurious--nothing expected of me all weekend but writing.
When I passed my exams in Monday morning, I felt the whole thing went...well....anticlimactically. Smoothly even.
Now that my energy is back, the tail end of a cold working its way out of my body, my head clearing from the congestion-haze, I am in panic.
So I'm pulling an old trick out of the mental health toolbox. My therapist suggested that, when panic begins to make my palms clammy and my joints jittery, I remember a time when I felt both a little nervous and a lot excited. Because some nervousness is good. It keeps out senses heightened. It keeps our bodies in movement, fingers typing across keyboards. But panic to the point of paralysis is not helpful.
So I'm remembering the morning I boarded a plane to Alaska. I had just graduated college. I landed a job assistant directing a girl scout camp. I had four and a half months of employment ahead of me, two pairs of pants in my hiking backpack, and copy of Anne Sexton's collected poems in my carry-on (they had been my constant companion since I was twelve--explains a lot, probably). My bank account was depleted due to a traffic ticket I had gotten the week before while trying to impress a girl on a first date.
And yet, as my dad took me to the airport with a reluctant send-off (I still hadn't bought a return ticket home--for all I knew, I could stay in Alaska a year and ask my college roommate to send me my winter boots), handing me the twenty bucks that would become my only cash for three days as I was stranded in Anchorage, I felt light. I had butterflies in my stomach. I wasn't able to drink coffee that morning because the nausea was overwhelming. But my body, heart palpitations from eating disorder recovery and all, was in forward motion.
When I landed, there was no one to meet me. I called my new work office and there had been a mix up in my flight plan. Could I find housing for a couple days until they sent someone out to get me?
I paid cash for the cab to the hostel. I ate from vending machines. I slept a night and when I woke, I took in the vista and the sky scrapers and the overwhelming brightness of a sun that doesn't set and I thought, "Well, damn, I'm on my own."
This feeling, tonight, is what I'm going to get back.
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