waking up and immediately knowing it's going to be an attack day is its own special kind of dread

the feeling arrives before i'm fully conscious.

something at the edge of awareness. a pressure. a particular quality of light that feels wrong. a sound that lands differently than it should.

i open my eyes and i already know. before i've checked the time, before the alarm has gone off, before i've moved. the day is already decided.

the dread that follows is specific. not the dread of pain exactly, though that's coming. the dread of cancellations. of the to-do list that will not happen. of the person who will need to cover for me. of explaining again.

some days the alarm makes it worse. i'm in the fragile pre-attack state and the sudden sound is the first hit of many.

i changed my alarm to fade in gradually for this reason specifically. on the bad days it doesn't stop the attack. but the alarm isn't a trigger added to an already-loaded system. on the not-attack days i don't have to find out the hard way whether the alarm would have been the thing.

just wanted to put it somewhere. the knowing-before-you-know feeling. the pre-attack dread that starts before the attack does.

anyone else live in this specific anticipatory state.