I celebrated my birthday last night with my family and my best friend. It was a bit of a roller coaster.

I had a 4 hour orientation for my new job, and halfway through it out of nowhere I had a full blown anxiety attack that lasted for an hour. I was absolutely terrified and so embarrassed. I felt a wave coming over me for 15 minutes, and then we got let out for break and I felt really dizzy, took a couple benadryl and a sprite and sat in my car absolutely frozen and terrified. I felt like I was going to be carted off in an ambulance. I only had enough strength to text my dad a couple times who told me to take the benadryl and practice deep breathing, and then while I was sitting in the car I had to talk myself down from it and told myself, "Okay, at 3:35 I have to go back no matter how I'm feeling" so I went back and fifteen minutes later the benadryl kicked in and I slowly snapped out of it. I have no idea what triggered it, but it was the longest-lasting anxiety attack I've ever had. My eyes hurt from the bright lights and the flashing transitions on the powerpoint, and my brain felt like it was being squeezed and I was just filled with dread. When I came back, I drank three bottles of water and the drive home was exhausting.

I was still iffy when I came home and went out for dinner, but I made myself push through those feelings and my parents, my grandparents, my best friend, and I went to a BBQ place and we had ribs and potato salad and macaroni salad. It was delicious and the first rib was hard to eat because I was still anxious, but then after that I managed to eat two more and was feeling pretty good.

Then we came home and my uncle and his girlfriend was there and we all had cake and ice cream and opened up presents. My uncle and his girlfriend got me a "Cat Lover's Adult Coloring Book" which I thought was from my mom because it wasn't wrapped, then I looked on the inside and my uncle and his girlfriend both wished me a happy birthday on the inside cover and they also gave me a set of really nice colored fine-point pens which is actually my favorite type of pen. My best friend gave me a really cute card that had a cat on it with glittery-pink hipster glasses my grandparents gave me a sweet card, and my mom and dad got me a target gift card and the same student bible that I used to have before the fire, even from the same year that the first one was from and my mom and dad both wrote an excerpt from the bible. It made me tear up.

So my best friend, my uncle and his girlfriend and I wanted to play Cards Against Humanity, but my grandparents also wanted to play, but they couldn't understand that this was a game they were not meant to play let alone watch, so we ended up playing poker which I was bummed about but my uncle's girlfriend showed me a magic trick with the cards that was really cool. Then we all took a fireball shot and my uncle and his girlfriend made a toast to me and then we did our own thing after that and my best friend slept over.