In spite of your best efforts to hold it at bay, you feel it building. There's an indefinable feeling rising in every inch of body but you recognize that feeling because it has visited many times before. It's as if you somehow become more aware of yourself and every cell is rattled, whispering, warning. Sometimes you might will the beast away but other times she comes charging in, refusing to be denied.
The pain hits you as she does, right in the gut. Sometimes it's sharp like you've been punched or stabbed. Other times the beast prefers to roll through your abdomen, producing an intense cramping sensation. One hand flies to your stomach and you double over. That's when you know she has arrived. There is no time to stop it. Your best hope now is damage control.
She doesn't care, pushing forward with her own agenda, taking charge. Control of your own body is quickly spinning out of your hands. She hits you hard and fast everywhere she can think of so that your focus is split. You can't figure out which attack to defend against first. There's a tight, cramping soreness taking over every muscle and tendon of your hands, arms, legs. The pressure in your skull is building and squeezing. Your chest is tight. Your throat feels constricted.
It's hard to breathe. You gasp for air, hyperventilating and desperately trying to bring yourself back to calm. Water, you crave water but when you raise the glass to your lips you cough and sputter every ounce of it back up. You try to speak, but what reaches your ears isn't language. You try to back away from the triggers, thinking that if only you escape them you'll have a chance to relocate normalcy. They fight back, equally desperate to remain at the forefront of your mind. You pace, trying to run away from the sensations. You grab at whatever you can and squeeze it, throw it, thump it against the wall. You're dying to break something, as if that might release you from the mounting hell.
Eventually it settles, at least enough so that you can have a stray thought or two. You won't know for sure that it's over until hours have passed. For a long time you're left hanging in limbo, wondering if the symptoms will continue to subside or if remission is only temporary and something will set them off again.
