The Monster

The chocolate I'd be eating... if I wasn't in a flare. :(

I have the clarity right now, so I'm talking about a difficult topic. It's one of those mini-essays I write that sometimes stops me from getting sicker, and I need all the help I can get right now.

The PMS/PMDD is right on time, which is actually a giant, relieving sign that I may be headed out of this flare soon. The second half of a cycle is always more reactive for many women, both for allergies and MCAS. Being a very rare two weeks late in Jan/Feb (!!!) due to the stress of losing my dog made me super reactive and directly resulted in my current MCAS flare and prolonged recovery.

...but it also means that the Monster is back, and I hate, fight, and fear her. I'm now laying here, still recovering, with this constant psychic pain, this rage. It's physical. It's in my chest and arms and shoulders. I actually twitch. The emotion always comes first, and it quickly wraps itself around any nearby benign stimulus. Inanimate objects are fate's weapons against me. Media, social or otherwise, is propagandic drivel. Friends are enemies - and that's the worst one, because it affects my relationships. Anything can be touched and diseased by a hormonal change, and that is disgusting. That is why I hide. I don't want her to scar or damage what I have.

I did so well with communication this week, too. I felt it coming on yesterday and was lucky to accomplish some things within this flare before the inevitable mood and emotional upheaval. Today it hit me like a boulder to the chest, dragging me further and further down into a dark, watery abyss. I can't breathe, but I don't die. I am in stasis, caught between the large stone and sinking into the muddy bottom, wide-eyed and suffering, thinking only of those I hurt. Shocked, alarmed, air-starved and gulping. I can do nothing to fix it and so few people understand the depths that PMDD can reach or how it shapes an adolescent, an adult, a personality, or a career. It is a constant state of loss, mourning, destruction, and rebuilding that I've experienced in increasing severity since I was 12 years old. It's not being grumpy and eating chocolate; it is losing oneself for half of one's physical adulthood.

There is a discussion to be had here about women's health, and it is likely that I will write about it at some point. I do not have the energy or emotional stability to do it justice right now.

...but, for today at least, I can at least try to hold on to the idea that living The Monster means that maybe I'll soon make a week with out an epipen, or that in two weeks I can add new foods back in (after the normal second half reactivity leaves), or maybe I can even go back to trying light geocaching again in a month and a half. I'll try to take those ideas and use them to seal off the powder keg in my chest from the lit match that is consciousness.

I can TRY. Ideas, however, make very poor sealants.