This week:

I had two very special nearby friends, Mark Richards and Zoe Hyman-Levy, have birthdays. I celebrated with one by running errands, eating crumpets and drinking tea, and giving her things to read. With the other by drinking whiskey and cooking together in our kitchen and basking in mutual laughter. Simple celebrations and pleasures.

I had three panic attacks, and the associated waves of aftershock and fear and PTSD and cerebralism and and and and. But in the end, I am ok and I will be ok. I don't know why they happened but I have ideas and all the ideas make me feel like I can keep them from happening again. I have an appointment with my psychiatrist and thanks to Benefits I have the ability to go back into counseling in several weeks. I have a good network of support here and I am hesitant in using them because I'm not used to it but they have been so good to me already and allowed me with open arms to be a shaky mess and helped me over three days to heal back up. I have a boyfriend who is not afraid of me even when I am afraid of myself. This panic has raised old and new questions, traumas, scars, worries, and made me realize that I am rusty in my self-care mental-health-management strategies. Time to get back on the wagon.

This week Seattle has been both exceedingly cold, not in actual temperature but in sensation, the acute bite of "feels like ___ (cover your skin)" that the Minnesota and Buffalo airs exude from November to February - and nearly...balmy, the gray, hefty winter sea breeze that lives in Amsterdam in my memory. All in one week.

I have also read two books this week - two books that make you stop in your tracks and go WHOA. There's the human condition, right there. Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City and Lidia Yuknavitch's Chronology of Water. The first is about Manhattan and tigers and chaldrons and a man who only three people know and marijuana and love and alienation. The second is about abuse and sex and motherhood and substances and forgiveness and families and intellect and...well, water. It is, actually, not dissimilar to Anne Lammott's Traveling Mercies, which I recently read, but the ferocity of the writing is unparalleled. Then again, Lidia Yuknavitch and I both write in run-on sentences so I am partial to her. Now I'm reading Zizek on Violence, my first Zizek, and it's reaffirming most of the things I believe and blowing my mind.

This week I feel kind of good at my job, maybe for the first time. I feel good at it in the moments where I don't know what the hell I'm doing, even, and able to say, "hey Sarah, you sometimes won't know what the hell you're doing because you deal with crazy shit all the time and that is ok."

This week at work: a youth told me that if I "did not find him a girlfriend in 60 days, he was going to sell 100% of his soul." I guess he told someone else he wanted to be the ultimate Dark Arts master, "like Voldemort." Another youth told me that he was willing to be waitlisted for shelter that night so that he could check his facebook. Another youth called me a bitch for telling him that if he kicked the front door one more time he would be asked to leave for the day. Another youth asked me if he could buy me a cup of coffee in the morning. Another youth showed me a picture of his genitalia on his phone, but I did not ask him to leave because he has only been back in services for two days and usually he does things like punch holes in the dryer or threaten staff with pool cues, so it didn't really seem worth it.

Quite a week. But, today, I feel at peace. I am picking up my new purple rain jacket from the North Face store, watching Art 21, being cozy in my bed, asking myself what I need, allowing myself to breathe.

Yoko says: Keep your quiet centre and dream of love and all good things. World peace will be ours in no time.