Falling on a Summer afternoon

Today has been a backwards, inside out kind of day.

Like all of them,
it looks perfectly ordinary from the outside.
We woke up and I fed the baby breakfast: toast made from homemade bread, with peanut butter and bananas and cottage cheese with cinnamon.
We took the dog out.
We cleaned up, got dressed, went to the park.
I drank coffee.
I chased the baby around the park and the beach for an hour. He wanted to see trucks. He chased after dogs. He befriended a four year old and they chased each other around giggling.
We shared a bottle of water, and he ate a handful of pita chips.
He fell asleep in the stroller as I navigated through appalling construction that made the fifteen minute trek to the grocery store take three quarters of an hour.
He woke up in the store after only a little bit, and I peeled a clementine for him.
He sucked the juice out of the segments and I finished the shopping.
I took a weird roundabout way home to avoid the construction, and it was eleven thirty before I got home, and I had been awake for five and a half hours and I hadn't eaten yet.

Bastian ran around while I made a smoothie, and I forgot I hadn't eaten, even though I was starving, and I put in the frozen leftovers of an almond milk latte from the day before, and after I drank the smoothie, I got such a caffeine buzz, but it was nothing compared to later.

It's four thirty in the afternoon.
And I think I am fighting a panic attack.

I did all the normal things.
I talked to my mother on the phone about her trip to Canada to see my Grandmother.
I fed the baby lunch and talked to Bob during his lunch break.
The baby and I went to the library, and played for an hour. I read him The Cat in the Hat.

Then I left with him in the carrier thinking that he'd fall asleep.
Which he did.
Except I couldn't calm down then.
All I could think about all day was going to the farmers market.
All I had to do was walk for forty minutes with the baby asleep on me, and I would be there.
All I wanted, was for him to sleep, for the wind to blow, for there to be strawberries at the market, for there to be something delicious that surprised me. I wanted to see the baby dance to the musician playing in the square.

But my legs hurt.
And my eyes felt unfocused.
My head clouded up, and the prospect of walking so far suddenly made me feel weak and sick.

So I turned around.
I came home.
All I wanted to do was have a lovely market experience with my baby.
But when I couldn't do that,
all I wanted was to sit in front of the computer and write while he slept.
Except, the moment I sat down, he woke up.

I couldn't stop feeling weak.

I thought maybe I needed to eat more.
I made toast with hummus.
I drank a huge bottle of water.

And I feel drunk.

I feel dizzy and weepy and off.

I don't want to eat.

I don't want to be in my house.

I feel like I've failed everything, and I don't know why.

Like I'm falling down a tunnel, and I don't have the strength to scrabble at the walls.

What do I do?

Wait until it passes.
I guess.
Like everything.WhatW