only twice before have i ever had this feeling. this feeling like my body is rejecting my stomach, like my heart  is clenched in a vice and i'm overcome with panic. i'm panicking over how to make this feeling stop, how can i make it stop. it can't be real, denial. what can i do, what can i say to make this feeling stop, it just won't stop and it feels so wrong, so terribly wrong. my mind is immune to any other thoughts, they creep close and bounce back, deflected, unable to penetrate this fortress of sorrow, of loss and of pure panic. i've only felt this twice before. once when sydney died, and when he disappeared the last time.

it's panic, it's instinctive, like survival. when you find yourself in a very obviously dangerous situation with little time to react, that kind of panic. watching a shark's jaws open before you, or a scorpion's tail raise above your skin. sitting in the seat of a car veering uncontrollably toward some massive impenetrable obstruction. simple panic, i must get out of this situation now, i have to get out.

i have been feeling this way for almost a week now. like my body is trying to purge my organs, i don't want to feel, i'm sick of feeling like this.

while trying very hard to go on like this, things continue to crumble.

i am usually the bad guy, the voice of reason, the sane person who keeps people out of trouble but as such i'm seen as a bit of a square. i bitch when people want to drive intoxicated, i don't feel that firearms or explosives or any such weaponry is necessary to have a decent time. i don't think that my housemates should be riding dirt bikes across our grass and laying rubber on our driveway at 3am.

and this past friday i became the really bad guy. the really, really bad guy. i was cornered, i was in a situation where it was either i become this bad guy, or i take a hit for the team. i'm sick of taking hits for the team. and this time it might have been in the form of a criminal record. but here i am, sitting with a friend, trying to talk about something i can barely contain, something i don't know how to handle, and she gets up and says, "i can't take this anymore, i can't be at your house, it's a fucking zoo". i can't blame her, and a massive, hurtful , emotional argument ensued through the night and even when i tried to succumb to my violent need for rest, the crowds kept rolling into my room until 8am.

the rest of the weekend was spent explaining my position over and over to people older than me, until i fell into exhaustion. and that's when becky called. i didn't answer, she calls again, i'm almost catatonic, i don't answer, mike3 is snoring next to me on the couch and i feel like snoring, i'm so tired i can't feel, i'm not even sure i know what the sound of the phone ringing means. the room has a red hue to it and my eyes are dry from so much crying, i feel nothing but an enormous lack of sleep and energy, so much that i can't even close my eyes, i can't i just stare and the phone rings and the phone rings and the phone rings. she shows, she's bawling so hard she's hiccuping. the problem, it sounds hard and cold and i feel terrible for her and she cries. i finally fall into my bed and stare at the ceiling until 4am and sleep miraculously arrives as i'm about to expire from a lack of it.

the next day i sit and i stare and i can't eat, i can't drink, i can't breathe hardly. i just stare. i turned on the tv and watched cspan and the evangelists and all the christ-criers and some of the tv listings. i just stare. i stare and stare and stare and the amazing race comes on and the first team eliminated is from ohio and i bawl. i go to bed. i can't handle awakeness.

the following day another friend calls, and she's upset. so i stay up with her and she cries. and then i crash into bed again, and i stare at the ceiling again, actually, i believe i had the after hours ringing and colored stripes screen courtesy of the cbc on in my room. 3 am rolls around. tomorrow should be a better day, i thought, i'm getting used to this not checking the mail thing.

but then i woke up this morning and i sit down at my computer and get ready to pump out some serious work, and my brother is online. from thailand. he asks if i've seen the news today. i check my email and sure enough there's a breaking news bulletin from cnn that tanks have rolled into bangkok, they've taken over all the tv stations in the country, a state of emergency has been declared as has an unofficial coup, which looks as though it should be official within hours. the problem is that the prime minister plans to return from new york and fight it. and in amongst all that, the marshall law, the possible violence, the closing of bars and restaurants and tourist attractions and possibly the airport, the military state, sits my brother, already homesick, already having trouble adjusting to his new home in phuket. i made him register with the embassy online this morning so at least he will be notified if the canadian government thinks that canadians are unsafe there.

and through all of this, all i can think about is you. my heart is eating itself. i am exhausted. i have never been so exhausted, my life has become a joke over the past few days, a cyclone of hellfire singing the hairs on my arms and the tips of my eyelashes. and all the fuck i can do is think about you. how are you doing, how are you doing, good fucking god please let him be ok. i feel nothing for myself, although maybe i should, i feel nothing for me. i've had my eyelashes singed before. they grew back. i don't know how you are. i don't know how you are... that's all that fucking matters to me. why can't someone fucking cure me of this?