Things have been very tense in the Twin Cities of late with all the protests and uptick in violence, as a dispatcher I am bombarded every day by people whose lives are falling apart, my own anxiety has been ticking upward for the last few weeks and at times I am at my point of a major breakdown, but when I do that I follow Mr. Rogers’s advice and take a minute of quiet to reflect on the people in my life who care about me and I feel better. Yesterday after reading how many of my friends were speaking about the emergency services community especially our police officers I was at my wits end, how could these people who know me and know people like me say such horrible things?

I went to bed, planning on taking an Ativan to quiet my inner demons but couldn’t find the bottle (it was under my bed) so I went to sleep, at midnight I awoke feeling like I was suffocating, and took off my cpap and went to sleep, through out the night my dreams were terrifying, voices and images from my past were coming up and my conscious brain knew what was going on and I resided myself to the fact I wasn’t going to get much sleep, but I tried to get back to sleep, somewhere my conscious and subconscious brains melded and again while having a nightmare Mr. Rogers walked by and said how proud he was of me for being so brave, and that he would sit quietly if I wanted to get some sleep. I still slept for crap and I am feeling it today, but then, sometimes being brave means you are stiff and sore the next day.

At least my boss is buying us fried chicken for lunch and we have a bunch of girl scout cookies donated to us.