It’s normal. It’s all fine.

She sits in the chair, absorbed in her book. The leather is soft and still has that new leather scent. It’s enthralling, the book, and she’s lost. But her coffee has gone cold.

When she gets up to get a drink, there’s a change. Before it even starts, she knows she’s screwed. And when it starts, she can barely hear the soft whimper escaping her mouth.

Her head feels tight. Pain blossoms between her eyes, at the bridge of her nose. Ears fill up. Pressure, pounding in time with her heartbeat, which has now doubled within a split second. It sounds like an ocean in her head. With the cacophony of the shrieking pitch of tinnitus instead of gulls. She’d prefer the gulls about now. Her throat starts to feel like it’s going to close and she opens her mouth, gasping for a breath.

Doubles over, hoping to lower her center of gravity, but it won’t help. She can’t feel the coffee mug in her hand anymore, and when it slams into the tile floor of the kitchen, it splits straight in two. A coffee puddle begins taking over the floor. For a moment, she’s grateful she can’t feel it as it sweeps over her feet.

Grab the stool. Hold on. This one’s not passing. Feeling seeps away from her abdomen. The pain originally blossoming in her forehead now explodes. She sees stars. Gasping. Panting. Please, just let me breathe.

The numbness spreads into her hips and thighs and she tries to bend forward a little more. To brace her hands on the floor to break the fall she knows is coming. It’s too late. She topples over. Convulsions kick in. Skull bounces off the tile. Eyes roll back. Legs jerking, arms flailing. But she’s still present. Still knows. Desperately wants to break out of her body, just so she doesn’t have to be in this broken down, failing, piece of shit.

It’s not a seizure.

It passes and she doesn’t even care that she’s lying in the coffee puddle. She’s just grateful she didn’t land on the broken mug. And entirely too weak to get up. The pain is gone. The pressure is slowly subsiding. She can finally hear the rhythmic whoosh-whoosh, whoosh-whoosh of the dishwasher.

A broken, but alive, mess on the kitchen floor.

It’s all normal. It’s all fine.

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