This is sickening. I can tell when I'm slipping back into that panicky state; I can't turn off my brain when it starts feeding me horrible ideas. Like before I went to sleep my house was on fire. I could see the flames licking at the ceiling inches from my face, little burny bits dripping off in that liquid way fire has, and I closed my eyes and tried really hard to think happy thoughts but my house was on fire in my head.

Then I dreamed about zombie apocalypse. It sounds funny but it wasn't, we were just trying to find out what was happening and the news was all wrong while people were being torn apart and then there was no news, just blank screens, and it didn't matter if you tried to run from the city to the rural areas, there were zombies there too. We ransacked a supermarket and had to almost kill another lady to get a cab and then we never made it home to barricade ourselves in anyway. At the end it was me and my mom and furryhatsrock and olukemi screaming as the zombies pulled apart the car to get to us, and then my alarm went off.

Why can't my alarm ever go off when I need it to? Earlier for dreams like these, later for the good ones?

But. That panicked, half-hysterical, slightly shaky state I got so familiar with in high school and my second year of college? Back in force. And now I don't have a handy shrink to go talk me out of it.

I just have to tell myself.

Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts.