Losing equilibrium and fighting monsters

I keep bursting into tears. Well, not bursting really, more like drizzling into tears. My nose runs, my eyes get all teary, and the lump in my throat makes it hard to breathe. It’s like there is a miniature storm brewing, just below my surface. It seems that there is nothing under my skin but salt water and it is expanding and sploshing around. I need to keep very still not to let it spill.

One minute I’m fine, the next I lose some equilibrium (see something, hear something, think something) and it starts leaking out of my eyes and nose. I know all the probable reasons for this leakage, but I push those little monsters back, swatting at them with whatever is near – a plastic fork, a broom, I even threw the little baby food jar that contained the balsamic vinegar for my salad for lunch at a particularly ferocious one earlier.

And, simultaneously, the hollowness echoes in my terrarium, making the sploshing salt water that makes up my being so loud it almost blocks out the sound of the wind howling outside the Ivory Tower. I know the gale is there, though. I watch the birds trying their hardest to fly into it, being bashed backwards by its power, and that makes me leak again. I can relate.

I wonder how I can make myself keep completely still, so the leaking stops?