Hasn't happened in a while. Used to call them "panic attacks", but I stopped after a while because I never really panicked.
Went to bed last night dog-tired. Lay there for maybe twenty minutes of dozing, and then something in my head clicked on and I couldn't shut it off. I could hear everything, feel everything, and it was all . . . wrong. That's how I've always known the thing had started: everything was wrong. Too soft, too loud, too dark, too light, too big, too little, too close, too far away, all at the same time all in my head and I can't look away even though I see nothing. And then I was going over little snapshots of conversations from the day, the day before, two months ago, three years ago, two years from now, online, offline, all jumbled together and each one ending with me going completely off. Verbal abuse is putting it mildly; I was vehemently lashing everyone and anyone. My sister, my father, my mother, my teachers, my friends, I gave them all exactly what they deserved to hear and none of what I had the right to give, and I could not stop.
You could call it panic, I guess, because my mind was racing far beyond what is normal for me and flitting from scene to scene without much rhyme or reason. But I wasn't afraid. I know people who lash out in fear, and I felt no defensiveness or paranoia, only wild aggression. And all I could do was lie there and force myself to breathe and wait for it to pass, because what I was afraid of was that if I moved at all I would not be able to stop moving until I was destroying something.
This doesn't happen to me often. When it does, I shut down. Completely. No one knows it's happening unless I tell them, and I tend not to tell.
I'm telling you now. I don't know why. Maybe it's to show people that I do have problems of my own to deal with. Which I do. I don't usually speak about them, though, because they are my problems. They are not your problems. And I feel it insulting to shove things I can deal with off on other people, causing them to worry, when nothing ever comes of it.
I don't need tests and bloodwork to tell me I am extremely volatile and have a high aggression. I know this myself. I have known it for some time. So I am always on guard to make sure nothing happens. I don't get mad when I'm offended because I decide when I'm offended. I don't get mad when I'm hurt because I decide when I'm hurt. It's a control thing. I rule my body and my mind, and neither rule me.
And it's surprisingly more simple than it seems.
