What sucks about being empathetic is you get jerked in a million different directions, depending on who’s doing the Yanking at the time. This even includes Yankers and Toyers like movies and books. The effect is particularly pronounced when I’m in midst of or on the tail-end of one of my “Protracted Painic Attacks.”

A PPA Cycle requires a Massive Confluence of Multiple Maddening Encounters With People whose opinions aren’t worth caring about, Pain, and a Profound Awareness that nobody hears me or gives half a shit: basically a Cluster of Fuckups and Fuckovers in a relatively short time.

This is a Disastrous Combination for me in the absence of a support system, except for my Mom, but she only visits to bring me junk mail, empty my trash (full of the junk mail she just brought me) and tell me which of her Church Ladies are praying for me. Please forgive me that The Only Person Who Still Loves Me’s most well-intended comfort doesn’t clot when I’m exsanguinating.

To Survive, I’ve evolved into a paranoid and overly-defensive person (at least during these times). If I didn’t, people would, have, and constantly attempt to take advantage of my Easily-Approachable, Easily-Appealable, Easily-Appeasable, Usually-Unsqueaky Nature.

So while I feel like my body is literally wasting from lack of External Comfort, I can’t find anyone I trust with the Job. When that happens, my next course of action is Isolation, which only serves to waste and starve me more.

I think certain parts of me never learned to fish. Maybe THAT’S why I have No Appetite? Maybe a psychologist would know? My Psychiatrist doesn’t know my name, and he doesn’t like it when I ask annoying, superfluous questions.

What does a hungry, bleeding, cyclically-self-agoraphobic do to keep safe in Cyclonic, Typhonic, Emotionally Cataclysmic Clusters of Ominous Weather and Even More Ominous People, waiting to feast on what’s left of her leathery, petrified sinew?

Honestly, I think 3 Chicago-style hotdogs and a giant milkshake, literally and literally, would do the trick. Too bad I’m begging for fuel but can’t stomach the liverworst vending machine sandwiches from the neighborhood gas station.