We all float down here..

While cutting through the student union, I was victim of an attempted biblethumping.

Biblethumper: "You look like a woman who knows where she's going!"
Me: *nods; continues walking*
Biblethumper: "Then you must have planned which direction to take your mortal soul before you die? Have you given any thought to letting Jesus into your heart?"
Me: *stops, slow headtilt* "My body to be rendered to ash, freeing my soul to return to the spiral nebulae and the eternal embrace of Yog-Sothoth. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. I deny your 'Jesus', born of mortal woman. My gods are born of stars and void, eternal of presence and awesome in their majesty."
Biblethumper: *backs. away. slowly*
Me: *exit, stage left*

Do not fuck with the literate.

There's a rather large flock of wild turkeys roaming the campus this year. They've been doing us a service by eating the mostly rotted Ginko fruit that's littered the lawn by the building I work in. Rotted Ginko fruit smells exactly like decomposing dog shit. Only you'd need a dog the size of a Triceratops to get a stench this big.

Driving in to work today, I had to stop and swipe my garage pass. One of the poults^* hopped up on the hood of my truck, all 'Oh hai thar'. All I could think of was:


I turned on the wipers, the poult backed off but stayed on the hood. I tried to shoo it off, it ran to the other side of the hood and gave me a hurt look. So I got back in the truck and waited. As you do when there's a really stupid bird that has these on their feet:


Having worked with raptors^*, I see talons and all I think of are the other raptors. The ones with claws like these on their feet:


I am not stupid enough to get in a confrontation with a bird that could seriously hurt me if it panics.

The Parking and Transit service dude, however, was not so smart. He came over and told me to move the truck.

"Can't. Turkey on the hood. I tried to shoo it off, but it's stubborn. It'll likely get bored in a few minutes and hop off."

"You have to move the truck now. You're blocking one of the entrances."

"There are three more right next to this one, and nobody's come in for the last ten minutes. I'm pretty sure I can give the dumb bird a few to get a move on."

"I'll scare it off the hood for you, then you can move the truck."

"That's a bad idea..you've already started to chase the turkey. Great."

So this guy tries to shoo the turkey. It runs to the other side of the hood. He runs around the front of the car to that side, yelling and clapping his hands and looking all manner of foolish. The bird just moves out of reach. Wash, rinse, repeat several times. I'm trying not to laugh, and I really regret that I didn't bust out the cell phone and get video.

The bird hunkered down and leaned forward. I heard the guy say something about it ready to fly and.. well, birds in that position? Flying isn't what they're about to do. Which the guy found out. He reached to try to startle the bird, and it let loose. And I do mean loose. Semi-liquid stress urea and feces, from a Ginko-laden diet, came out at force and hit the man's lower face, neck and chest. Thankfully, most of it did not land on my car. I had the windows up and the air wasn't on, and even so, I could still smell the horrendous stink he'd just been covered with. Only after, when the man was screaming obscenities and gagging and trying to clean his face off, did the bird hop off my truck and scamper off into the grass.

At that point, I couldn't move the truck because I was convulsed with hysterical laughter and gagging. I did manage to hand the man a roll of paper towels to help clean himself off.

And this, folks, is another reason why you don't harass the wildlife. Seven hours later, I'm still giggling.

^* - a young turkey
^* - birds of prey

I guess I should back up. 7 weeks ago, I lost $Stupid_Cat. $Oldest_Cat did not take the loss well, and would roam the house, yowling plaintively. If I opened a door, he'd run through it and race around whatever room was on the other side of the door, yowling and looking for his brother. Yes, I let him see and sniff the body - he hissed at it, gave me a dirty look, and ran away. It became clear that he did not understand that $Stupid_Cat wasn't coming back. I kept telling him - we've seen that movie, it didn't end well. That did nothing to console him. He yowled. It was the most pathetic, sad yowling I've ever heard out of an animal in my life. He'd yowl so hard he'd puke. Usually on my bed. It was breaking my heart and driving me bugfuck at the same time.

Can't get another cat. On top of That Guy being allergic, my choice was either a) adopt an older cat and put up with health issues/vet bills that go along with older cats only to lose it in far too short a time, or b) get a kitten with a 20 year commitment. I can't. I'm still grieving the last one.

A dog is not an option because I work full time and that isn't fair to the dog. Nothing nocturnal, nothing that stinks, so ferrets, chinchillas, and hedgehogs were right out. Naked mole rats require a lot of specialized gear so they don't get too hot or too cold or too dry, and I'm just not up to knitting tiny little mole rat sweaters. I'd been thinking about a rabbit for awhile. Pretty much since $Stupid_Cat seemed bound and determined to waste away on me. It was only half-hearted thinking. Rabbits are a lot of work and, having had them in the past, I know that I loathe cleaning bunny cages.

$Oldest_Cat being a sad little psychotic made it more imperative. He needed company. Cats and rabbits are capable of getting along, he has no killer instinct whatsoever - I mean, really. The damn cat brings me live mice in the middle of the night, dropping them on my face and meowing at me all "Mom, the small furry thing is out of it's cage. Put it back in the cage, mom. It's eating my food again." So I wasn't worried that the cat would hurt the rabbit. I was more worried that a rabbit would hurt the cat. But I couldn't take the yowling and the grief anymore, so three weeks ago, I went to the Animal Humane Society to check out their rabbits, and came home with the one that stole my wallet out of my purse.

He's a Rex, about 9lbs and roughly 3 years old. That's roughly early middle age for a large breed rabbit, so he only has 6-7 years left - about what I expect $Oldest_Cat to have. He had two puncture wounds on his back from either a big dog or fly strike when I took him home, plus two other patches where it was clear he'd had skin ripped off. With my love for 'Watership Down' - he became Hazel.

$Oldest_Cat was originally made of hisses when I brought the bun home, but he has since warmed up. Hazel is pretty much, "Hello, New Friend!" about the cat. $Oldest_Cat enjoys watching Bunny TV, and has exchanged sniffs and face rubs with Hazel willingly. The yowling has died down to a manageable level, and the stress-puking has completely stopped. Once the house is cleaned and organized, and my cables are all put inside conduit, the hope is that Hazel can become a free-range house rabbit and he and $Oldest_Cat will become best buddies and I'll have a cat/bunny Utopia until they both die at a ripe old age, on the same day, so I'm not left with another grieving pet. Hey - it's good to have goals.

The house rabbit thing is working out well, so far. The litter pan is easier to deal with than the old school trays under the wire bottom cages used to be. His rabbitat is a heavy duty dog playpen set up in a 6'x3'x40" rectangle with a coroplast bottom. He can stand up, he can (and does) run around like a spaz and hop and flip and do bunny parkour. His poop magically goes away because people want it for compost. He keeps me occupied, and he's completely sweet. I've never had a rabbit that would hop up to me and nudge his big fat head under my hand to be patted before.

Anyway. Pictures. Not very good because he does not hold still.


The rabbitat looks all clean and empty.. it's since got another litter pan perpendicular to the first, and toys, and cardboard boxes for Hazel to rip up. I love how it makes my giant bun look tiny, though.

So there you have it. The reason I have an excess of poop lately.

1. If I ever have to move again, I'll have more options because finding places with one cat is easier than places that allow two.
2. Cat litter will last twice as long. (I fully expect that $Oldest_Cat will start peeing more just to spite me.)
3. There will be half as much cat hair cluttering up my house. Or: I can procrastinate longer between vacuuming.
4. I can go back to buying the good, healthy cat food instead of the garbage that was all $Stupid_Cat would eat.
5. I won't have to yell at the boys to stop fighting anymore, because the 3am spats will no longer be waking me up.
6. No longer have to play 'Ok, what $!@$^ impossible space has he found to hide in today?' or panic that he's somehow escaped into the Big Blue Room without me noticing.
7. No more being woken up by the Worst Kitty Halitosis In The World.
8. No more "KITTY! Don't eat that! That is not food!" ($Oldest_Cat, not being a little kitty retard, doesn't try to eat things like kleenex and q-tips.)
9. Half as many claws to clip, ears to clean, puddles of hairball to clean up after.
10. Half as many vet bills.

I keep telling myself these things and more, trying to see light through the dark. I'm alternating between the anger and acceptance stages of grief. I keep trying and failing to find something funny to say. About as close as I can get is "I'm thinking about replacing him with a Naked Mole Rat, since they are immune to cancer and can live up to 30 years." but nobody seems to find that funny except me.

Anger, because over four years and thousands of dollars of vet bills (multiple vets as well), "there's nothing wrong with your cat", "If I saw the test results, I'd think you had a perfectly healthy cat, because his numbers are perfect. But I've seen him. I don't know what to tell you, other than it might be a food sensitivity." There was clearly something wrong with my cat. He'd go in cycles where he'd lose most of his body weight, I'd play Musical Foods until I found one he'd eat again, he'd gain the weight back and then two years later do it all over again. This last time was the third cycle, and it was the worst, where he was down to literally skin and bone. My own internet sleuthing told me it was either hyperthyroidism (and his thyroid was "fine" on ultrasounds), or chronic kidney disease (and his numbers were also "perfect").

For anyone else who has a cat that suddenly starts looking like a model for anorexia, I highly recommend this site. It not only gives more specific examples of symptoms, but lists pretty much every test to have and things to do to maintain a cat with CKD. CKD is almost impossible to diagnose until a good chunk of the kidneys have *already failed*. In the case of $Stupid_Cat, it was never diagnosed, but I treated him as if he had been, and watched his food and fluid intake, added baking soda to his food to stave off metabolic acidosis, gave him gushy food - anything to keep him eating and drinking. In the end, I was right, but that's not really comfort. I'm trying not to be angry. I'm trying to acknowledge that it's just a stage of grief, this anger. It's hard. It's hard not to start the blame game, and it's impossible to not blame myself, even though there's nothing I could/would have done differently even if I had received an official diagnosis.

$Stupid_Cat went into acute renal failure two days ago. He died yesterday morning. He went peacefully, at home, which is about all one can ask for a 14 year old cat. That's where the acceptance part comes in. This long, frustrating fight is finally over. He didn't suffer. He wasn't in pain. He just.. stopped. He was planted in the back yard of my sister's house - the house I grew up in - yesterday, in a spot chosen because there was a random catnip plant growing there. The serendipity of that appealed to me.

The night before $Stupid_Cat died, $That_Guy called and asked to speak to him. I put the phone to $Stupid_Cat's ear. $Stupid_Cat heard his name and turned to look at the phone, and when $That_Guy started talking, $Stupid_Cat started purring really loudly. That, and the way he and $Oldest_Cat touched noses and purred at each other the final time, are the two memories I am choosing to keep from this death.

$Stupid_Cat
August 8, 1999 - June 20, 2013
Went out of my world the same way he joined it, curled up in my arms and purring.


$That_Guy and $Stupid_Cat head-booping, during cycle #2 of "why the hell is my cat wasting away". $Stupid_Cat did not have stegosaurus spines, those are the ears of $Oldest_Cat, who is far too dignified to head-boop.

"Rainbow Bridge" comments not accepted or appreciated. Seriously, keep that glurgey fucking nonsense as far away from me as possible.

I don't generally ask people what they want, because I feel that if I ask, it more or less obligates me to do everything in my power to fulfill whatever want they come up with. I have a very long resume of accomplishing even the most bizarre requests.

So you'd think that someone who's known me as long as $Good_Twin has, that he'd know better than to answer, "What do you want for your birthday?" with "Marzipan My Little Ponies! An entire ARMY of them!" And, perhaps, that my calm reply of, "Ok" should have set off every warning bell the boy has.

Apparently you'd be wrong.

He was born at exactly midnight, August 7. I decided this called for a two-day pony event.

He just called me a little while ago, screaming incoherently because his doorbell rang and, arrayed on plastic sheeting on his lawn, were 100 My Little Ponies, made out of marzipan and pulled sugar, all individually painted with different MLP decals.

It apparently took him awhile to get them all in the house.

I'm waiting for him to go back to sleep.

Because what's better than 100 marzipan My Little Ponies?

200.

Of course.

CAVEAT: I loves me the hells out of Pizza Luce. When looking at new domiciles, I specifically looked for one within their delivery zone. Their pizzas are heaven, love, rainbows, and all things good - baked on a pizza crust. They even have gluten free pizza crust and pasta options, which is where our story begins. I normally do not do food reviews on this site but this.. this needs to be done. For the good of mankind.

One of their gluten free offerings is a dessert called a "Molly Bar", which is described as, "Our delicious gluten free and dairy free chocolate brownie."

"Ok, that's possible," thought I, "if they used cocoa butter instead of regular butter and dark chocolate, which isn't adulterated by milk.. Ok. I can see it. How bad can it be?"

Thankfully, right on the heels of that, the cautious side of my brain went, "Bitch, you are ordering one of their regular brownies, just to be safe. Just in case." The Molly Bar is $3.39, a regular brownie is $2.49. While the prices might seem high, let me inform you that by "brownie", they mean "a slab of frosted, baked chocolate heaven roughly 8"x4"." The Molly Bar was slightly smaller but denser. This turned out to be a good thing.

The super perky delivery dude showed up in a short amount of time. Taking bounty in hand, I quickly began divesting the bags of the goods. The first thing I noticed was that the brownie was frosted and the Molly Bar was not. Then I imagined a dairy-free version of frosting and realized why. It looked like a decadent, moist brick of chocolatey goodness. Eager to try this new treat, I unwrapped the cling foil and inhaled as though sampling a fine wine. It smelled of chocolate. Thus encouraged, I took a bite. My teeth met some odd resistance, a chewy texture that was distinctly at odds with "brownie" and more akin to "mochi". "A'ight, they used them some tapioca starch in this bad boy. A'ight, that's ok, that's common for GF foods. I can muscle through this."

I closed my mouth and gave a chew, savoring the bite. Attempting to savor. Only without any actual savoring taking place. At all.

My very first thought was, "If I bite my tongue off at the root and spit the entire mass out, will it stop? Will the taste of horror.. stop?" It is almost impossible to describe the sensation of creeping disgust that overwhelmed my senses.

But I'm going to try!

The texture.. Imagine a bunch of black tapioca bubble tea pearls, cooked past the point of goodness and into gelatinous mass, but properly soaked in a mix of brown and regular sugars. Then, imagine a very confused termite mistaking this mass for wood and chowing down, and for dessert, finding some cacao and carob nibs to nom on. Replete with pulp, our termite wanders down into the very bowels of Hell and finds there a baking pan. Imagine our termite puking up his bounty into the pan and wandering off, leaving it to steam and congeal.

I am used to mochi. I am used to all sorts of random Asian seafood-or-tapioca goo gels/puddings/food. The Molly Bar is a whole new level of "Jesus Christmas, what the /fuck/ is this?!"

The taste.. So, you've gotten as far as imagining a steaming pile of tapioca-cocoa termite puke, right? Now add brown rice syrup. Add to that the most horrificly bitter aftertaste heretofore unknown by the tongue of mortal man. I had to check the label, but apparently the FDA does not require "hate" to be a listed ingredient, nor "the bile of a thousand evil serpents". The entire inside of my mouth was trying to cringe away from this substance, while everything it touched was being coated with some sort of oily, waxy, bitter film. The chocolate was a lie. There was a vague, tantalizing hint of it, but it was totally smothered by the rest of it.

"Well, this is as bad as it gets. Might as well swallow it and get it over with. 1, 2, 3: Down the hatch!" Because clearly, I was so overwhelmed with abject disgust that I was beyond rational, coherent thought. I attempted to swallow it. My throat closed up around it as though to deny passage to this hellspawned, Satanic goo. It took the chugging of an entire glass of water to force it down. I could feel it, sitting there in an oily, waxy, gelatinous lump in my stomach, repudiating the attempts of my stomach acids to turn it into something digestable.

Brushing my teeth and using mouthwash did not get rid of the oily, waxy feel or the taste.

Garling with hydrogen peroxide, followed by salt water, did nothing except add a piquant salted flavour to the horror that had overtaken my mouth.

At that point, there was nothing left to do except injest copious amounts of alcohol until the nasty taste died or my tongue became so numb that I no longer noticed it. A third option was death by alcohol poisoning, and that was preferable to having this taste in my mouth one moment longer.

Eventually, alcohol-fueled ennui overtook me and the sense of loathing slowly faded. I wound up in a conversation with Kel over whether I should call a priest, a HAZMAT team, those nice people who clean up after really messy crime scenes, Mythbusters, in an attempt to rid myself of the remaining foulness - and whether any of that was preferable to cutting it into tiny pieces and freezing it to have on hand when people didn't believe me about the awfulness of this thing.

I threw it in the trash, because lo, I am lazy.

That's not the end of the story.

Something got into my trash and ate it, leaving behind the tattered remains of the cello wrap and product ingredient sticker.

There was a dead, bloated raccoon in the alley the next morning.

It could be a coincidence.

Right?

Right??

---

TL;DR - even if you are suicidally depressed and your life is made of tragedy and woe, you do not hate yourself enough to eat this goddamn thing! Don't do it. Really. Truly. Avoid at all costs.

Godless Daughter: "Why shouldn't we eat yellow snow?"
Me: "It tastes like lemons. You don't like lemons."
Her: *pause* "I think it tastes like pee."
Me: "Why do you know what pee tastes like?"
Her: "Well, I don't, not really."
Me: "So you can't be sure yellow snow tastes like pee until you try actual pee."
Her: "Yeah, proba..AUNT T! I AM NOT GONNA DRINK PEE!"
Me: "But eating yellow snow is ok? Isn't it past your bed time?"
Her: "I DIDN'T EAT IT! I JUST SAID WHAT I THINK IT TASTES LIKE!"
Me: "So, again.. you don't know.."
Her: "STILL NOT GONNA DRINK PEE!"

Yup. Still doing my job right. :D

I am now officially done with the physical space that was Chez Stamp, and fully moved into $Duplex. The only thing left is to wait for Stamp's management to try to screw me out of my deposit, as they have done with everyone else that has moved out in the last year, and the ensuing court dates.

$Duplex isn't that much bigger than Chez Stamp, but since it's not up three flights of stairs, I was able to get rid of my 10x20 storage unit and bring furniture and boxes of books back to my domicile. The boxes of books represent mostly just the paperbacks and a few hardcovers I've acquired in the last 10 years. It's about 1500 of the 6k or so books I own. Physical books, not even counting the several thousand ebooks, though to be fair, most of those are duplicates of books I own in some other form. Everyone needs at least one addiction, right?

In the process of bringing home the Stuff From Storage, I've noticed that when I moved everything into the pods, and then into the storage unit, I really didn't do a very good job of purging. I think I was grabbing everything in the house, stuffing it into a box, and putting it into the pods so I didn't have to think about it. Much of it has respawned in the meanwhile, or spontaneously generated from amidst the piles of stuff. I'm weeding through it all and people on Freecycle and Craigslist are making out like bandits. For gits and shiggles, I put some of it on Swap.com and we'll see if anything comes of it. Eventually, I will have an organized living space with just the stuff I want to keep. That'll be a nice change :P

Chez Stamp was supposed to be a three-month layover until I was in my new house. When that fell through, I just didn't have the energy to deal with anything, and then my mother died, my job went away, and I don't deal well with change even when I'm firing on all cylinders. Staying at Chez Stamp was much easier than moving.

That changed when the living room ceiling started a reoccurring leak that springs up in a new place just as soon as the old leak gets patched. I have foam-filled beanbags as furniture. One of them is 7' long. I live in fear of the day I come home to a leak that's turned my couch into a giant sponge. And then there's the mold issue in the ceiling that is causing me to go broke buying allergy medication just so I can function. Thank gods Allegra-D is over the counter now.

I've found a lower level duplex that suits me. I go to sign the lease on that tonight. Part of me, the part that's been having all sorts of nesting urges for a year or more now, is happy that I'll have somewhere that I can decorate and arrange to suit me. The rest of me is anxious. Moving right now, with my job status being "contract" is stressful. Moving in winter is stressful. A small part of me is stressed out because I'm moving into a one-bedroom, which means it's only for a year or two until things stabilize, because there's this whole adoption plan and I can't resume that until I have at least a two bedroom. Oh, and a job that's stable for at least a year. But there's that whole looming 'moving in the future' stress just sitting there, staring me in the face.

Hell, moving at all is stressful. I have to pack my stuff, which requires sorting through said stuff to remove Stuff That Needs To Go Away Forever, putting stuff in boxes, moving it to a new location, unpacking the boxes, and then arranging the stuff in places that make sense to me. I dislike change at the best of times. On top of that, there will be Noises. It's a new neighborhood and a new house with a new neighbor living above me, and I have PTSD. Every new noise will have to be cataloged and filtered out before I'm comfortable. It'll take about a week, but it will be a week of little to no sleep because every noise will be startling me awake. My housewarming gift to myself may be Skyrim, because hey, if I'm not going to sleep anyway.. :p

On the up side of things, the walls are not beige. They are earth toned, different in every room, and the colours suit me. I can put things on the walls as long as I fill in holes after I leave. There is a small fireplace with a working and cleaned chimney. There are French doors into the bedroom. The kitchen is bigger than a one-butt. So is the bathroom, although I am not certain the tub/shower is. There's a mudroom for storage. There's a trapdoor in the kitchen to a crawlspace, in case I need to hide a body temporarily. There is off-street parking for winter so I don't get towed. I can garden and have carte blanche to put in whatever plants I want. It has hardwood floors throughout. It's on three major bus lines and two blocks away from the Light Rail. There's Pizza Luce, United Noodle, a co-op, an Aldis, and Sebastian Joe's, all within reasonable biking distance, which is either a really awesome thing or an 'oh gods, I'm going to go broke' thing. One of my requirements was 'must be within a Pizza Luce delivery area', which, if you've ever had their pizza, you totally understand. If you haven't had their pizza, you are missing out. Seriously.

The move is going to be a good thing. It's an incredibly anxious thing, and I am not looking forward to packing or unpacking AGAIN.. but it'll be a good thing once it's done.

Right now, I mostly need to be somewhere I can be happy. I need somewhere that feels like "home". Chez Stamp was never happy-making or home. It was make-do-until. Apparently after the original "until" fell apart, the new "until" became "until you are minutes away from teaching the building owner and manager what grievous bodily harm means". The kitchen is so small it gives me fits any time I try to do anything, the ceiling in the living room has turned into an indoor waterfall several times over the last eight months and is now a mold garden, and the claustrophobic layout means I can never have more than one person over at a time. Granted, I don't usually want to have more than one person over at a time, but occasionally I do and not having the option makes me a sad panda. The new place is laid out better, and I will have space to cook and feed people, and when I clean it, it will actually feel clean, which makes me happy. And like I said, right now, I need that.

Forward momentum.

I have PTSD. I have had it for 30 years, which is the majority of my life. My mental status quo is as good as it's going to get, and it's lightyears better than it was when I was growing up.

Most people who meet me think I'm neurotypical. I'm not. People with schizophrenia, autism, or aspbergers peg me as one of their tribe almost immediately, and I'm not, although I share certain aspects of each of those. PTSD changes the composition and chemical makeup of your brain. Mine has been changed for most of my life, and I'm still struggling with a certain amount of disassociation and hypervigilance. But because people assume I'm "normal", they don't understand why I'm not social, or why I'll insist that I can't do something that is easy for them. I tell them, "That will make me panic." The most infuriating response is when people say it'd be "cute" or "funny" to make that happen. Because they think I'm normal, see, so they think I'd maybe hyperventilate or possibly scream a little.

That isn't what panic looks like on me. My fight-or-flight doesn't have a 'flight' option.

I know what my triggers are. I don't like being in a situation where loads of people are staring at me, particularly if they're all standing behind me, or between me and the only exit in a room. Rooms with only one exit make me nervous. Having my wrists restrained is a bad one, though it's gotten less bad over the years. The feeling of being smothered, which can include the water from the shower pouring over my face or a bathroom full of steam. Things jumping out at me. Loud, sudden noises. High pitched noises. Being in a room with a lot of background noise or loud music or conversations, because then I can't hear the things around me. Gunshots when I'm not expecting them, especially at close range. Gunshots on a shooting range is perfectly fine, because I have ear pro on and the sound is muffled - and if I'm on a range, I've prepared myself to be there. Things coming toward my face. The feel of certain textures. The most odd one came up recently - the part of an avacado, the dark green part just under the dinosaur-egg shell. Not the light green edible yumminess - the slimy outer coating. Touching it will send me into hysterics, because it feels like the layer of tissue between scalp and skull. Because I know what that feels like. I have known since I was 7 years old.

It's rare that I have a triggered panic attack anymore, because I've learned to control my environments and the people I'm around. I've learned to lock myself down and I've also learned how to talk myself out of the hysteria tree, for the most part. But let me walk you through what it feels like.

It starts with nervousness, a tightening of the gut, and the need to look around the room, find the exits, examine faces. Hypervigilance sets in hardcore and I start examining the minutae of the room, the people, their body language, their expression, things they're saying. I start obsessively counting things - how many times that person tapped their hand, how many cups are on that table. My brain itemizes which things around me could be used as a weapon. It finds places in the room that could be held against a mob. It assesses who is most likely to be a threat, where they are in the room, where they are in proximity to me. The gut tightening gets worse and I start convulsively swallowing, because there's a horrible metallic taste in my mouth. It's the adrenaline, and I know that, but I always think if I just swallow enough, it'll go away. It never does. Unlike a lot of people, I don't hyperventilate - I go the opposite way and have to force myself to breathe, otherwise I'm holding my breath with anxious anticipation. My heart will start to hammer and I'll often break out in a sweat. At this point, I'm still aware and cogent and able to take steps to make sure it doesn't get to the next part. I duck out or duck under something. If I'm in a room full of people, this is when I get outside, and barring that, I put myself in a corner or under a table. Literally, under a table. It drops the acoustic ceiling and makes it less noisy so I can focus and breathe.

If someone is foolish enough to try to stop me leaving, or makes a big issue of what I'm doing, say by pointing it out or trying to be "helpful" and talking to me in baby-reassurance talk, it will just reinforce that I'm going bugfuck and make my anxiety that much worse. Even at this point, I'm still aware enough to snap at people and tell them to back up off me, leave me alone, don't touch me. If left alone long enough, I will either calm down and get a grip or GTFO of the situation. The best thing to do, if I'm in this situation, is to back away and ignore me until I grab the sanity reins again.

But there are people in this world who Do Not Get It. They think they're "helping" by doing things like hugging me or getting in my personal space or trying to "talk me down". Which for some stupid reason involves touching me.

The panic can go from "lucid" to "unholy monkeyfuck batshit" in less time than it took you to read that. When that happens, my vision goes grey around the edges and becomes hyper focused tunnelvision. Everything is warped and out of perspective, because my brain has just decided reality is not where it wants to be and disassociated, and I'm so flooded with adrenaline that I am literally hallucinating. I'm seeing monsters. I don't recognize people around me, and you don't want to be in my peripheral vision. I don't understand English. Everything is warped and terrifying and threatening. All I want is to be left alone and anything coming toward me is perceived as a threat, and I only have one way of responding to a threat.

I go fucking berserk. I hit, kick, slap, bite, headbutt, knee, elbow, and basically become a whirling, spitting, screaming, swearing, hissing, growling dervish of insane fury and will beat the living fuck out of whatever is in my personal space. I won't feel any damage I take, because my adrenaline output is so high. I won't stop attacking unless people back up or pile enough bodies on me that I can't - and that makes it much, much worse. Leave me alone and I can bring myself back down out of the monkeyfuck tree eventually. Restrain me in any way, and I lose my shit and will scream until my throat bleeds, and require pumping enough sedatives into me to knock me out cold, because even under chemical restraints, if I am aware, I will fight. If sedation is required, I wake up in an ambulance or a hospital and that's yet another trigger, but doctors and nurses generally know to leave the panicking person the hell alone.

The most horrible thing is that somewhere, I'm aware the whole time this is going on. I'm disassociated, so part of me is watching it and cringing in embarrassment and anguish, helpless to do anything to stop it. I will feel awful later, for hurting someone - and I /will/ hurt someone if they don't back away, and there's always someone who wants to play psychiatrist and try to touch me.

The part people don't get - if I lose control, I cannot stop it. I hate that feeling. It's part of why I'm as Type-A as I am - I absolutely need to be in control of myself. I don't get high, I don't get drunk - hell, I don't even get tipsy unless I'm secure enough in the company I'm keeping that it's not an issue for me, and that is rare. There's no drug or therapy in the world that will fix PTSD. The only way to prevent it totally is to put myself on a drug regimen every day that turns me into a Thorazine zombie with no emotions whatsoever. It is at this point as good as it's ever going to get. I am functional on a daily basis. I know what the triggers are. I know how to get away before I go psychotic. I don't put myself in situations where I might spontaneously go monkeyfuck. I am only social on my terms, and if I'm having a bad day or my reserves are low, I'm comfortable calling whoever I was to be social with and begging off or begging a raincheck. The people around me are not people who would be upset by this, so there's no anxiety there. The people I hang out with are not going to stare at me like I've grown a second head if I suddenly and abruptly insist I need to get outside, get somewhere quiet, get away. I don't work in an environment where triggers are likely to happen. That Guy knows I am tweaky in crowds and doesn't make me be his +1 in situations where I might not be comfortable. He doesn't like crowds either, so he's on board when I'm all "It's time to go now, yes?" It irritates me a lot when people assume he's being a jerk by not inviting me to events. It makes me feel bad that they blame him, when it's not him. He's known me this long - believe me, he knows what situations would tweak me the hell out, and he doesn't subject me to them. A recent comment by one of his friends was, "Wow, two events in one month! It's almost like you're a REAL girlfriend!" It made me neurotic as hell. Should I offer to go to more? Is That Guy upset that I'm such a tweaker that I can't go to things with his friends very often? Does it bother him that I have to be social on my terms? Does he want me there? Does he not want me there? That one was fairly easy to talk myself down from. If it bothered him, he would tell me. When he requires my presence, he asks me. And if I had to say, "No, I think I'd be too tweaky." - that would be ok.

The people who think it's cute or funny to set me off, or who threaten to instigate a panic attack basically cause me to write off that person and the situation. Example: I'm in the SCA. I panic in crowds. I mentioned this as a reason I don't go to court, and asked TPTB to please never call me into court and here's why it would be cruel to me. One of TPTB wrote back an email that said, basically, "It's not about you, it's about your friends and the populace seeing you honored, so if it happens, you need to man up and go into court and now that I know you'll panic, I'll make sure to have people escort you to make sure you show up." That person has ensured that I don't go to court. I've gone exactly three times since then, and all three times were when I had to go because I had a report to make. I have friends sitting on the thrones right now. I'd really like to go to their court, to see them in shiny gold hats, because it makes me smile that they have the shiny gold hats. They're my friends and I absolutely know they would not set me off - and I still can't do it, because it's now been logged in my brain as a potential triggering event - because someone threatened to make it happen. Another dumb one is karaoke. I can't sing - and I mean physically, it literally makes my throat bleed, I cannot sing. Friends do karaoke and I offered to go and watch, and they threatened to kick up a fuss and make everyone chant my name until I stood up and sang. The very thought of that makes me want to vomit. They threatened to invite me out to dinner at some point and not tell me it was karaoke until I got there, and make that happen. I don't associate with any of those people anymore. I don't go to that restaurant, either, just in case.

I do my best to not go bugfuck in public. I haven't had an incident in years. I am social on my terms and I have learned to not associate with people who can't accept that.

This post sponsored by this other post here - not all of it applies to me, but enough of it does.