jitters

When I was in high school lo these many years ago, I went through a phase that I can now only describe as "jittery." Have you ever almost fallen, and caught yourself at the last possible instant, that split-second of adrenalized terror? I felt like that for nearly two months. It wasn't emotional -- the feeling persisted through joy and sorrow and fury. It was horrible, and I didn't know what was wrong with me.

I finally told my mother that I wanted to see her psychiatrist, and she made me an appointment. He ran down a long list of questions, most of which I thought were irrelevant. I don't remember what they were. I remember that he didn't try very hard to disguise his snort of derision when I told him I had a phobia for spiders. I especially remember it because I spent the rest of the interview watching a small grey spider crawling around on the outside of the window.

He dismissed me and my jitters as mere adolescence, a phase to be endured. He didn't even offer sympathy. I remember being infuriated as I left, and then writing him off as a hack, interested only in the cases of middle-aged and middle-class women for whom he could write prescriptions that insurance companies would then pay. He didn't want to help anyone, much less me.

It is possible that adolescence exacerbated the problem. Certainly, by the time I was out of college, I wasn't suffering them very much any more.

But they're back now. They've been back for... I don't know how long, because they crept back slowly and gradually and only made themselves obvious in the last few weeks. I am far too out of shape to run in the rain. They manifest now in daydreams and fantasies.

I dream of sweeping my arm across the dining room table, sweeping everything on it to the floor. I dream of doing the same thing to the counters in the kitchen, the tables in the living room. Not just throwing everything away, but actively flinging it all to the ground, shredding paper and splintering wood and shattering glass. Even the things that are mine. Especially the things that are mine.

I fantasize that I will come home to a burning house -- an old-but-favorite of the Mutant Worrybrain -- and yet lately I wonder if it might not fill me with as much relief as grief.

Yesterday, as I was coming home from work, I turned into my neighborhood and thought, "I have credit cards. I don't have to go home." It was an impulse without desire, not even a momentary one. It lasted less than a second and was gone. But when I got out of the car and walked up the porch steps and put my hand on the doorknob, I had to stand there for three long, slow breaths to convince myself that I was going to open the door and go inside.

Today, I walk through my office halls and smile at officemates as I pass, but my hands are shaking, ever so slightly. I'm munching carrots at my desk, almost continuously -- I've gone through more than a pound of them today -- because chewing something takes the edge off the jitters. It's better for me than chocolate bars, at least. Is this how I got fat in the first place, using food to work off nervous energy? I don't know.

I don't know what's causing this. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know where my daydreams and fantasies come from, because I do know I don't want them to come true. I don't know what they mean.

And I don't have time to figure it out.

EDIT: That's a reference to lack of wiggle-room in my schedule, not some impending Doom. I'm not that crazy.