I planned to write a nice post about something at work today. Well, not something. A specific thing. Autumn weather and the challenge of dressing for the full variety pack of season -- guaranteed at least three seasons in every pack in random order.
Or maybe it was something else. I didn't get a chance to write. Now I don't remember.
What I absolutely was not going to write about was the doom spiral of ultimate despair my brain was careening through while I drove to work purely on muscle memory. Yes, I chose to write about the weather again just to distract myself from this morning's freak out.
But of course I've forgotten the incredibly witty words I had lined up. But I made it through a nine-hour shift without needing sedation so we'll call it a draw.
So what caused the death spiral? (I know you didn't ask, but I have been asking myself all day.) I think because I either didn't set the alarm or turned it off during one of my middle-of-the-damn-night bathroom trips. So instead of waking up to a clock alarm at 7:15 the cat's autofeeder woke me at 8:00.
No. Really. That's it. Scoff if you like.
There's a scene somewhere in season four or possibly season five of Justified. Two men discussing hypothetical events thst look quite a bit like the situation they're in the middle of. One man describes the totally-not-based-on-you antagonist as being one broken shoelace away from becoming an addict again.
One broken shoelace away.
That's kind of been running through the back of my mind all day. We have the idiom about the straw that broke the camel's back. Which seems to come from a 17th century essay wherein Thomas Hobbs mention the last feather which breaks the horse's back. A later essay by John Trenchard clarifies that it is the least feather or grain of sand that causes the reaction. (This is all from my extensive etymological research of just now Googling "straw that broke the camel's back origin".)
Then there's the Looney Tunes trope of a character, I'm picturing Sylvester here but I can't say why, loaded down with literally everything including the kitchen sink and another character, Tweety in this case, dropping one final feather, which is much more cinematic than a straw, on top of the pile. Which of course now collapses.
Probably some psychologist has already studied this -- how the mind copes and deals with huge issue after issue after issue after issue but finally breaks over . . . well, a broken shoelace. Oversleeping. Some innocuous minor event.
It's such a minor thing it's impossible to explain why it creates such an extreme reaction. Mental illness already has such a strong shame element to it. My cat died and now I'm planning my death. I overslept and had to rush rush rush to get to work on time so I cried through the whole hour-long commute. It is the least feather and the last because everything is broken. There's nowhere to go from here.
I was very definitely not writing this because -- what the hell?! I can't explain what hit me this morning. It wasn't a panic attack, just a crazy thought spiral. I'm surprised it didn't build to an attack. Something else I can't explain. It was just a strong release of emotions seemingly disproportionate to what brought it on. Yep, definitely not going to write about that. What could I even say? And it's embarrassing AF.
It was the Jenga block that toppled my emotional barriers.
It was the final snowflake that collapsed the roof.
It was one big plop that caused the levee to -- briefly -- overflow its banks.
It was indeed the final straw.
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