Twenty Four Hour Coffee Shop

I drove myself to a twenty four hour coffee shop. I can feel my heart wanting to skip beats. I try to tell myself its probably just anxiety. Along the walls are psychedelic paintings and Christmas lights. Across the floor — a couple living room style couches, arm chairs and coffee tables. A fireplace in the back seems to be for decoration only. Along the edges — more tables, chairs, and stools — that generic kind you expect to see in any average coffee shop. The lights are dim enough to reflect the fact that its 12 AM. It tries to create a calm tranquil atmosphere. I don’t know if I feel it though. Some kind of ambient electronic music plays in the background. Everyone, including me, all have a screen in front of them to stare at. There are a few conversations that let me know we are not yet completely consumed by technology and the glow of screens.

I thought I would write this, that I would try to write in one of my more uncomfortable states. A good deal of the physical discomfort I was feeling on the drive over has quieted. In the car my throat felt tight. There was that feeling in my chest. It’s difficult to describe. Something ugly. Something raw. Something uncomfortable and dysphoric. A feeling that I have experienced when turned up to eleven feels like the definition of unadulterated agony. I feel insecure and afraid even when I only feel small amounts of that feeling. I’m not sure if those emotions just happen to coincide with that feeling in my chest or if they’re all woven together somehow. Seemingly separate sensations and feelings that are all really a single interwoven tangled knotted horrible neurological THING! Sometimes when I have that feeling my chest feels like a vice, like all my muscles are rigid, stiff like a boa constrictor. I try to pass for normal when I feel like this. I feel like I’m always trying to pass for normal. Always trying to pretend being much more comfortable than I am. I think I’m always uncomfortable.

I keep feeling little pressures in my chest towards my throat. Like a skipped beat that almost was. There are skipped beats too. They make me feel more uncomfortable but I haven’t dropped dead yet. My dad’s father died of a heart attack at thirty five. I will be thirty five in five days.

I’ve been really struggling for a long time now to keep any kind of regular sleep schedule. A couple weeks ago I was awake only at night. I had a nightmarishly difficult time getting myself to wake in the morning and sleep at night again. Now I seem to be back at square one. This cycle keeps repeating itself for me too regularly. I’m going to set my alarms for 11:30 tomorrow morning. There’s a support group I would like to go to. But I know how the pattern goes. I will wake up and feel very insecure, afraid, and uncomfortable. I’ll shut the alarms off. Odds are good I wont even remember doing it. If I remember it I’ll feel an imaginary rubber band yanking me back to bed, to feel secure and safe sleeping — avoiding the feelings I shriek away from.

It’s now 12:41 AM I am sipping a cup of decaf coffee, two squirts of vanilla syrup, a little cream. The other day was Easter and I went over to my mom’s where my brother also lives. That seemed hard to write. Like it feels too much to illuminate them with my mental attention. Like writing anything about them could take me a thousand different directions I don’t want to go. There’s a lot to unpack there. I think they play some starring roles in the development of my mental health problems. My dad too. It seems like writing about him would be easier. Maybe because I’ve had enough distance from him. Trying to make sense of the role he played in my trauma isn’t distorted by him currently being in my life. Maybe things feel much more complicated with my mom and brother because they are in my life right now. In order to sort through the mental and emotional baggage they’re attached to I think I need distance. I need them not to be in my life for a while. I’m financially dependent on my mom to survive so I feel like I have to put all my complicated thoughts and feelings regarding them to the side. They currently come together as a pair. I feel afraid I will never be able to get away from her. I was able to get a job back in November but quickly wound up in the hospital.

I have about one third of my coffee left. Writing this feels draining. I thought once I started doing it, it would be easier — that words would start flowing out of me like they did the other day. No. Tonight its hard. I don’t feel much right now. Is that the same thing as feeling numb? I feel depressed, not sad, more devoid of feeling, flat, like things are dim, less alive. I feel tired. I think that’s all I have to write tonight. It doesn’t feel good, no cathartic moments. But I think if writing is going to help me to recover and I want it to document my journey out, then it will necessarily capture all my states of mind and struggles. This is one of them. My thoughts, my feelings tonight — just dim — in a dimly lit twenty four hour coffee shop. My cup is empty.

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