A bus hit me today.

It was about 3pm when I started getting the dizzy spells.  By 4 o'clock on full panic mode.   It just came out of nowhere, nothing triggered it.  I ran outside to sit with my face in the sun to see if I could calm down.    I felt the tears well up and I was not going to allow myself to cry.   It's not my fault these things happen to me.   I don't even know why this appeared in my life 5 years ago.  Everytime I get an attack I feel instant guilt, I feel like this is happening because of something I did .

I sat there, I calmed down a little and I went back inside to work.  I was looking around at everyone hoping nobody noticed that my eyes were red.  I went inside the office to sit down and hoping that maybe being in there would make it go away but it didn't.  So finally I reached for my prescription of Xanax and took half a pill.   I took a walk around the store and suddenly felt like I was going to spin out and fall on the floor so I went into the dressing room to sit down.  There is a mirror in there so i did my mirror exercises.   This fucking snake wraps around my neck and the fight I have to put up to get it off leaves me exhausted and tired.   My coworker started to talk to me and I wasn't even listening to him.  I was far away in a fighting ring, trying to unwrap a snake.

When I was working in the restaurant with Jiz he was already versed to it.  He knew by just looking at me that I was having one.   In the beginning he thought I was full of shit until one day he found me in his office pale as a ghost.   He says I get this vulnerable look and it's true but It's really my scared look.  I also start touching my neck a lot because I like to feel my pulse there.   It feels like I"m going to die.   I hate that I have to live with this and it took me a long time to accept that it's a form of mental illness.  I was doing so good but that is how this works.  I have good days and I have bad days.  My nervous system is shot.   I live my life as therapeutically as possible.

It makes me sad when I have to reach for the prescription.  It also messed up my mood for the rest of the day at work.   I'm so tired..

I guess we all have our crosses to bare and this mine.  I'm not embarrassed to talk about it because I meet people all the time who have suffered the same as me.  I talk about it a lot to bring some normalcy to it, it's ok that this happens to me.  It's not ok that I beat myself up about it.

I remember the first time I went to The Limelight.  I was 16 years old and had told my parents I was going to visit my cousin Sandi at Farleigh Dickinson that night.   Instead, me and my sidekick Carmen headed to see her so we can go with her to The Limelight.  She had already gone a few times but she wanted me and my girlfriend to experience it with her.  

So off I went in my most coolest outfit, which at the time was anything that was ripped jeans.   I put on my reddest lipstick and blackest eyeliner and thought I was grown.   I was such a little sneak.. lol   I blame my brother for this because I grew up with him coming in all late from the city all the time.  Who didn't love NYC?  

We got on line and had to wait to be picked.  We were three cute girls, of which only one had ID.  That Drag Queen took one good look at us and knew we were kids.   We smiled at her and she let us in..  yay!! we got in, we got in!!  That was the look on all our faces as we stepped into this whole other crazy world!   It was DARK in there and everything looked so Gothic!   The music was so loud and it was Packed!  Some guy rushed past me with a cane and hooked it on my jacket pocket.  I caught him and he felt so stupid that he ran away.  I swear, he looked like Mr Bean meets Inspector Gadget.  He was weird and so was pretty much almost everyone in there.   It was the early nineties so the Club Kids were still hanging out there.  The place was full of different outrageous characters.

After we got our drinks we walked around on an adventure.  We walked into a few room where everyone looked like they were doing very sketchy things.   We peaked in, and snuck right out.
We danced a lot, we drank a lot..  we fell right into one of those NYC moments.   We left at 5 am so happy and fulfilled and couldn't wait to get to a bed.

It was Good Friday.   We had a good night.    But then we couldn't find our car.

Newbie mistake.. we parked wrong.  They towed my cousins car to the pound.  This was a time when there were no cellphones and we kept numbers in our wallets.  My cousin called her boyfriend Louie in NJ to come to the rescue.  She sobbed and cried him into guilt and submission.  He came to save us.. Finally we get our car out and when we go to get our stuff out of his car...  It was locked!  With the keys inside.  What else could go wrong?

But we finally do make it to her dorm and get a few hours of sleep before she drove me and my friend back home.

This may not be a Oscar winning night but for my 16 year old self, that was epic.  It's always a funny story me and her mention because we always associate Good Friday as a bad day to go out.   A year later I got held at gunpoint at Burger King as I was coming in to work at 5am, on the same day.

The original church in the 40's 

I returned to Limelight many times after that night and always had a good time.   I do remember the dark stairways and stone walls.  It really was an old beautiful church inside.   It's sad to see what they did with it now.