Sipping my coffee, I began checking off my to do list on the imaginary fingers that I keep inside my head.

Order jars. Clean up the website. Order more pigments.

I decide to start with the last one.

I log onto our pigment suppliers website just like I have a hundred times before. As the colorful screen loads, it looks different than I remember. Scanning the screen, a small wave of unexpected panic washes over me. 

Wait. Where did the pigments go?

I begin looking frantically through the website, just hoping that I overlooked them somehow.

I scan and I scan again. To my horror, they're nowhere to be found.

They're gone? Instantly, I can feel another fresh wave of panic bubbling up from beneath the surface.

A lump forms in my throat.

No pigments. No SeaPaints. No SeaPaints, no business. No business, no income.

Lovely. Who even needs money?

The reality of what's ahead for me and my family starts to sink in little by little. 

To most people maybe it wouldn't seem like a big deal, but to me? It's everything. And not for the reason you think. It's not because SeaPaints is my dream. The panic is a direct result of me understanding one thing very well, I'm unhirable. 

My health is suffering and my work ethic is dwindling to match. But even if neither of those were true, the reality would remain: I'm a terrible employee.

Who the fuck would even want to hire me?

I want to laugh at this, but I'm too gripped with panic. I turn my attention back to the screen in front of me. What am I going to do?

The entire SeaPaint formula is centered around these pigments. Nearly every shade.  Without them, I'd have to reformulate over 50 shades.

Every shade. Every image. Every video. Every website tutorial. Every blog and every brochure. All of it would need redone. It's months worth of work. The weight of this realization is crippling.

How am I ever going to be able to do this?

My stomach flips as waves of hot anxiety start to consume me, eating away at me piece by brittle piece. My body starts to tremble.

We're going to lose everything.

The urge to vomit suddenly engulfs me.

Bolting from the bed, I barely make it to the bathroom in time before the chunks of despair come raging out of me.

Gripping the porcelain, my stomach violently empties its contents and my entire body breaks out in a cold sweat. I retch for what feels like hours, but I'm certain it was only a few minutes. When the contents of my stomach is finally empty, I dry heave until I can barely breathe.

Several vicious minutes later, finally satisfied with its purging, my stomach begins to settle and the dry heaves slowly subside.

Exhausted, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and sink to the floor. I sit there, allowing myself to cry until I can't anymore. I can hear Jose calling me through the door.

"Come on, he coaxes me. We can figure it out."

Who the fuck is we?

He does not know how to work the website, formulate paint, make diy videos, and the graphics to go with it, or most of the other tasks invovled, but part of me appreciates his optimism.

Reluctantly, I open the door and join him back on the bed.

"You do not understand," I say, shaking my head in disagreement. "I do not think I have it in me to do this all over again."

"Sure you do," he says gently. "You will figure it out. You always do."

Letting out a sigh I realize that I am too tired to argue. The type of tired that sleep cannot fix. Soul tired.

How does one even begin to rest their soul without literally dying anyway?

I am starting to think I will never find out.

I do not bother explaining to him just how devastating this is. Nor how much I have lost and that I will have no choice but to rebuild if I want to keep my business afloat. My head spins.

What the fuck am I going to do?

You could die. You could end this all right now.

I think back over the last few months and how much I have lost and it starts to sound tempting. Like a suicidal siren song, pulling me in.

Wait a minute.

On a hunch, I check my calendar. Great. 7 days from my period.

To many women, this wouldn't be a big deal. But for someone with PMDD, it's incredibly telling. 

For the next several days, I don't sleep much despite being exhausted. 

I decide to give up. 

Part 2 coming soon...