First there is the anger and the fear. Which lays which I can’t say; they build on each other like a dry stone wall, held by gravity and stress. There’s both a scramble and focus. Lock the doors, inside and out. Drop the blinds.

I am getting better at controlling the anger. In the past it would explode out in lashes and impulse, now it holds the line, defends, repeats what the boundaries and consequences are.

When the moment of unsafety has passed, and the hormones leave the bloodstream, of course there is the sudden exhaustion. The space left by the cortisol and adrenaline gets filled with lactic acid and melatonin. You thought you felt gravity before? The floor calls for the body.

The hypervigilance that had faded through the summer returns (the body keeps the score) and though the post-spike crash hits hard, the brain is back to scanning by 3am, and the craving to smoke rises in the morning. The benefit to slow, methodical breathing outpaces the slow, methodical death.

Then comes the hypomanic rush of…something. It’s not courage, it’s not victory, not dopamine, though it probably is the body trying to over-correct, over-compensate the fear and stress with a flush of excitement and boldness. We got through.

The body and mind wrestle with this. There are parts saying, we did it, our systems worked, we held the line, we got through it–we’re invincible! We can do anything! But there are others clinging to history and patterns, holding their breath, eyes and ears to the horizon. Don’t celebrate yet. Nonetheless there’s a voracious hunger for food and sex.

Even with a full belly, satisfaction soon fades.

A hollowness then. Grief stirs.

A still pond settles and clears bit by bit. A heartbeat returns to rest. The animal puts its head down to eat, and the out-turned ears twitch at the wind.