Last Night I Was a Thunderstorm in Human Skin. This Morning? Oh, you again.

A Memoir of Hormonal Hostility and Dawn Revelations

I'm just sitting here feeling like my bones are vibrating at the wrong frequency. Like I might shatter if someone speaks too loudly. But also like I might scream until the windows break.

Three hours ago I was incandescent with rage. A supernova in sweatpants. Everything in this house was offensive, somehow. The way the cabinet didn't quite close. The sound of someone breathing in the next room. The goddamn television and its goddamn commercials with their goddamn cheerful voices telling me about dish soap. Who can be that happy about dish soap? No one. It's a lie and I hate it.

I want to scream into a pillow but also I want to be left completely alone but also I want someone to ask if I'm okay. But if they ask if I'm okay I'll probably bite their head off so maybe it's better they don't. But why doesn't anyone notice?

The fridge is humming at the wrong frequency. I swear to god it changed. It's humming in B flat now when it used to hum in A minor and no one else can hear it but it's driving me insane. I stood in front of it for seven minutes just glaring. Like it might apologize or something.

I don't know what this is but it feels like my nerve endings are on the outside of my skin. Everything is too bright, too loud, too present, too much. The tag on my shirt is sandpaper. The lamp in the corner is personally attacking me. Just... for being there.

I rearranged the pantry at 11:30 pm. Not because I wanted to. Because the chaos of misaligned pasta boxes felt like an emergency. A threat. And afterward I wasn't even satisfied. Just tired. But too wired to sleep.

What even is the point of trying to explain this to someone who hasn't felt it? This irrational, cosmic rage that has no target but finds one in everything. The way a crumb on the counter can suddenly represent everything wrong with your life, the universe, existence itself.

Everything feels like too much and not enough simultaneously. Too much sensation. Not enough patience. Too much awareness. Not enough understanding. Too much emotion. Not enough reason.

I just want to exist without this feeling that I'm a lightning storm trapped in human form. Without thinking that maybe I'm actually losing my mind this time.

I start to think maybe this is just who I am now. A woman made of static electricity and unfinished sentences.

And then.

Morning.

The slight cramping.

Oh.

That's all it was.

Just my uterus, shedding its lining again. Just my hormones, doing their predictable dance. Just my body, being a body.

I feel stupid now. Embarrassed at how I raged through the house last night like a vengeful ghost. How I snapped at my poor cat for just looking at me. How I slammed the refrigerator door because the leftover containers were in the wrong place.

But also... validation. It wasn't me being crazy. It wasn't me being too much. It was just biology, chemistry, the clockwork of being.

I laugh. Pour myself coffee. Swallow ibuprofen.

Tomorrow I'll be fine. Tonight I'll probably cry at a commercial about paper towels. Whatever. Maybe being a cosmic fireball is just part of the deal.

Maybe we're all just stars exploding in slow motion, anyway.