Feeling: wordy
Listening to: music piped in to Flour Power
Reading/Watching: restaurant patrons

I make my decisions, and every part of me is resolute. There is occasionally an agitated pulse beat behind my eyes, but the rest of me is calm. It's like finally getting out of the car after a long journey: we're here, time to breathe and stretch cramped limbs.

But late at night, my stomach makes a liar out of me. "You think you're peaceful? You think you're strong? Ha."

I woke at 4 a.m. with bubbles churning through my digestive system, shifting and gurgling and traversing from tailbone to the slightest of flutters up my esophagus. I got up, walked around, tried to breathe. Snuggled Allegra a bit, who was lazy with her pink belly arched toward the ceiling, luxuriating on the wadded-up comforter.

Had some cereal. Drank some water. Tried a Tums, talked myself out of calling someone to make the bubbles in my chest stop. It was 4:30, at best I'd get a semi-conscious warble from even the closest of friends. And my stomach gurgled, shifting but not resolving, echoing back to early September, when things were freshly broken and I couldn't eat. Food tasted indifferent, different textures of the same thing, and I would come home from work with my stomach churning so hard I couldn't contemplate the idea of dinner. My husband raised eyebrows. Teased that I might be pregnant. "You, not wanting food? Something is up."

Privately, frantically, I argued with my body for another week of churning and emptiness. I lost five pounds. I was still running like a maniac, three or four miles every night just to make my twitching legs overpower my thoughts. Then I gave in, furtively walked the aisles of a Target and took both pregnancy tests in the bathroom of a Wendy's. I didn't want my husband to get his hopes up. Not when I was praying for the opposite.

And no, it wasn't a baby. It was an ulcer.

This feels different, this weird internal snowglobe, with bubbles radiating from pelvis to sternum, the tiny white flakes never settling. My heart would not stop beating its arguments: "You think you are in control. You think you can just keep talking and no one will interrupt you. You think you will escape."

Outside, I heard the wind blowing in the cold front: You aren't strong enough.

I picked up a book, saying a prayer of thanks to Jodi Picoult for being so good at getting me out of my own head. Read from page 146 to the end, and around 6 in the morning the rain drummed on the window that this was going to get so much worse before it got better.

Allegra gave a tiny grunt-whimper, and nudged my knee with her nose. She burrowed under my bent knee with her front paws, belly-crawling into the cradle of my legs and licking the underside of my exposed arm as it held the book aloft. Her eyes locked on my face expectantly, although the pupils shifted to avoid direct eye contact. She never challenged that I was the one in charge. I cooed at her, rubbed the scruff of her neck and chest, kissed her face. Her tail curled and waved like a plume.

I hugged Allegra to my chest, closed the book, and turned off the lamp. Turning my face into pillow, every part of the symphony in my body had finally quieted, and I answered its doubts: "Yes I can. Yes I am. Yes I will."

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