Cass - Day 13
As things often turn out here, rather than get to bed before midnight we stayed up talking until 0100. She overslept and got to work late as I began my workday bleary-eyed with surprise OS upgrades.
As we were talking about fear yesterday (or the day before), Cass mentioned it sounded less like fear and more like anxiety. As I don't (suffer, for lack of a better word) from anxiety, the thought wouldn't have crossed my mind - but I trust Cass and gave it its due consideration. Reaching out to Geekfriend, I asked how she managed her own anxiety. She went through her own version of my CHECKLIST and we had many similar bullet points, one of which was familiar video games. I thought that might be worth a try since I'm not at home and surrounded by teenage girls who aren't mine. So I launched Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time in three weeks. As it turns out, that was a mistake.
I've been playing Cyberpunk at home intermittently during my consume phase with zero adverse reactions. But because this game was my sole focus and solace during the nearly six months my wife wasn't speaking/interacting with me, no doubt an unintended psychological correlation was formed. I say this because almost immediately upon launching the game my heart rate soared, I got extremely hot and flushed - maybe a little dizzy - while overwhelming feelings of guilt and fear and loss crashed over me; guilt over my pending divorce and fear of losing Cass. I turned off the game. Cass - who's far more familiar with these things than I - identified it as a panic attack. My first was in 1997 in a Taco Bell in Dallas, Texas. I'd just returned from a year in quiet, tranquil Korea, and the sheer amount of noise and crowd size during lunch rush very nearly petrified me. My second was in 2015 - I had taken my daughter to the mall and guess I wasn't expecting to face the same lunch-rush type crowd. This was only my third if that's what it was, and it sure sounds like it might have been. And here I was concerned I wouldn't have much to bring to Tess this session :P
Cass came home about the time I got off work and we ran to the grocery store so I could make fajitas for dinner. Surprisingly, all the girls seemed excited at the idea. I say surprisingly because with the variance in their age and neurodiversity, it's basically magic when something like that happens. For a complete change of pace it was just the two of us, which made for an unusually calm shopping experience. After the grocery store but before dinner, we took a long walk once the sun went down, only our second since I've been here.
The fajitas turned out FANTASTIC. I'm already looking forward to leftovers tomorrow. That done, we went to Cyra's work and got frozen yogurt and visited with her until nearly closing. Cass and I concluded our evening on the couch where I read aloud again from The Little Prince. This time we're definitely going to bed before midnight as I'm driving her into work an hour early which tomorrow morning which requires a 0500 start time.
