was sitting in teskey yesterday, jotting away, when i felt increasingly, unbearably lightheaded and the world went spinning white. good thing i'm a literate woman, i thought, and scrawled an unsteady note for help on my neighbour's notebook. go out for air, she advised, and helped me out of class, got me some water from the graduate lounge, and went back to tell teskey i was feeling faint. i sat for a while sipping water, went and threw up, and then came back to class, where they were discussing how to get the james harrington translation of orlando furioso photocopied for the class, and i pretended to pay attention for the next hour. after class galena came after me with a barrage of questions - what happened? are you sick? have you had anything to eat? are you having your period? and i had to say, no, no, i didn't think it was any of that. came home directly after class, and got into bed. i half expected it to be morning when i woke again, but it was just past ten the same evening. had a bit of a shock when i went to splash water on my face - i was a rex shoe shade of grey. had some bread and jam and and dug up some panadols for the headache (what a good thing my pa always puts these things into my suitcase!) and tried to get back to sleep, except my head hurt too much for that. i think in between tossing i might have blogged a lot too - unable to sleep or work - and feeling rather a lot of manic energy.

i really need to get a grip and stop going to pieces in public. just last friday i nearly had a panic attack while out for dinner. this hasn't happened for some time - usually when i get one it has to do with public speaking or oral exams, but it's been a while since i've felt sudden terror from being in crowded rooms - not since the last english department reception anyway. heath was here last weekend and took me to dinner at the oak room. it was a friday night, (i'd forgotten about that, but then it was far noisier than i expected even for a friday) and i was starting to feel uneasy, but we had barely been seated a few minutes when there came a roar of laughter from the table behind us - and unexpectedlyi was irrationally and intensely frightened. everything became unreal - i was not who i was - and the room was not a room. i knew - rationally - that the noise around us could not be as loud as all that - and the were only perhaps 4 or 5 tables in the same dining room - i had seen them, coming in. but the noise seemed to rise in waves - pressing in on us - and i had the overwhelming sensation of - being surrounded. they weren't real people either - more like pound's apparitions. i started feeling dizzy, and there was a sharp clenching in my chest - i knew i was going to go into a panic attack if i couldn't control it then - breathe! i thought! i could only apologise again and again to heath - although at that point i would like to have run away from him too - he had become a stranger then too - good thing those deep heavy chairs were so difficult to get out of - if i left the room then i could not have brought myself to come back - would probably have walked all the way back to cambridge. and i was terriblygrateful for his consideration and - i think he tried to distract me by talking - brave man! - and that was a relief - and i tried to make small talk - what shall we order - there were two or three things i was thinking about - whereupon i looked down to point them out and the menu became blank - and after a few moments i realised he was still waiting for an answer and i had taken in nothing. it was at that point i was closest to tears - not for myself, but for my poor friend - who was about to have his evening ruined before we'd been there 5 minutes. after that it was half a miracle i got through those moments until the panic faded - i don't actually know how i got out of it - just breathing i suppose, and sitting still, and trying to be as sedate as possible through the rest of the evening. maybe the whole episode didn't even last that long - perhaps it only seemed long? it wasn't a disaster afterall, but it so nearly was, that i am still a little shaken, one week after.

the fact is, and i have known this for a while, i'm not fit for company.