Feeling alone again

Well, I am frustrated. I am frustrated, sad, upset, and I feel alone. I just feel really alone. How is it possible that I feel this alone? I am having a bad day, a hard time sitting here, a hard time doing anything. I can't motivate myself but I am restless at the same time. Which is just making me feel awful. This whole process of trying to get my meds right is frustrating. I once again had 8 really good even days and then dropped down again. Now granted, not as low as before, but low enough and it's been since Tuesday. I need this to be better than this. 4 plus days of depression after 8 days of even is not good enough. I need this to be better. But what do I do? Just wait I guess. I am frustrated because we up the dose of Lamictal and then after a few days I go the other way - too hyper, too happy, so we up the dose of Abilify, then I even out for 4, 9, 8 days, then I go down again, then we up the dose of Lamictal and then I go the other way...and so on. Instead of going up on Lamictal this time, I am going down on Abilify. 9 days of even is the record. Only 9 days. What am I going to do if this doesn't work? I am so exhausted by the whole thing.

Did I mention how alone I feel? Oh right, I did.

Alone

I just feel really alone. More so than normal. I feel like I have no one.

All packed up, and

It is with mixed feelings of course that I am going back home tomorrow. I need to go home, I haven't been there in a week, but I wish I could stay and absorb more of the wonder of looking out the window with my nephew or playing with an old lotion bottle or a hair curler. Sometimes I wish I could just suspend time.

The mail hasn't been gotten in a week, my cat is alone, I need to make my car payment, go to a meeting (it's been 8 days, but who's counting), figure out what's going on at work - oh right, that place, get back into exercising regularly, do my taxes, make a dentist appointment, meet with a sponsee, back to my daily routine of praying and meditating. It's back to reality and all that comes with it. My reality is not something to complain about, I'm not saying that.

When I had this breast cancer scare last week, it really threw me off, more than ever in the past and more than I expected. I handled it both better and worse than I would have anticipated. It scared me so much that what I really wanted was to take an unpaid leave of absense from my life for a while. I seriously wanted to walk into work and say see you guys later, I need to figure a few things out and I can't do it here. And it's true that I do feel like I need to figure a few things out, but I can't take an unpaid leave and check out for a while. It just isn't a possibility. I will have to figure those things out some other way I suppose. Regardless, I just needed some time. I needed to pause for a moment and step away from my life.

So instead I spent a week at my brother's house in Boston, where I "worked," but it was more of in theory than anything and mostly I just goofed off. Next week I will regret it when I look at how many hours I have to bill to catch back up by the end of the month - but, let's just forget about that for as long as we can. The time that I took was and it wasn't enough. I leave with what I came for, and with unanswered questions, and with even more questions. But I did figure a few things out. Next post.

Oh, and I am also sad.

One by one

One by one I am ending my friendships. Call it cleaning up some messes from the past. The one I ended the other day though didn't mean much to me - it's like the person slips from your existence unnoticed and it doesn't seem like anything is missing. It is easy, ending it - there is really no ending to it, you just stop engaging in it and it goes away. You don't even miss it.

This one though, I'm upset about. And I can't tell you why, I can't tell you the story - but just trust me when I tell you that you would agree with me. You would agree with me in ending it - you might not agree with being upset about it. I wish I could talk more openly about it - for some positive reinforcement, but I can't. The thing is though - this person, for right or wrong, meant something to me. They meant a lot to me actually, and I hate that. It's pretty painfully obvious to me at this point however, that they don't really care about our friendship. I've ended this friendship multiple times. And each and every time I get talked back into it. The person asks for my friendship back and I give it to them. It's never clear to me why they want it, but I give it to them anyway. And then I end it again and give it back again and end it again. And I wonder when I'll ever learn. Maybe this time.

This one doesn't slip away unnoticed. This one leaves a hole, a giant hole and I desperately want to fill it with something. Anything. All that is left is the same hole that was there to begin with, but it's still a hole. It's the same hole and it's the same size, it just has a different shape. This friendship played upon every weakness that I had and the very things I most hate about myself and I was powerless to stop it. It is the perfect example of everything that has ever been wrong about my life and relationships. It is the perfect example of the things that haven't changed, despite all the work I've done, I still feel the same about myself. If I didn't, I wouldn't be writing this post, I wouldn't have had this day. The thing about these friendships that I'm ending - they are very clear to me when they aren't mine. The answer is clear, if it's you. But if it's me, well...it's another story about low self-esteem, actually, this time it's the same story.

And it's been twisted around and convoluted - the story. It's been spun into something else. Because I know that I have a part in it. It's hard to be angry when you've been trained to look at your own part of a situation instead of blaming someone else. It's hard but it's not impossible. My part is that I keep participating, expecting it to be different. I willingly participate. I lose sight of the reason why I was angry in the first place, and that's what I need to remember, because I had no part of that. You know what they say - the first time you treat me shitty, shame on you, the second time, shame on me. What about the third and the fourth and the sixth and the seventh time someone makes you feel bad? You start to look like the stupid one.

I don't know where the anger goes, it just dissipates and that allows me to continue as if what happened didn't. Because if the options are to lose someone, to feel abandoned, or to keep someone, no matter what it says about me - I choose to keep them, because I am so desperately afraid of abandonment. Even if it means I couldn't possibly have any self respect.

A couple of things, like you don't know who you are talking to

Yesterday I wrote a post, and then un-posted it today. I un-posted it because it was emotional, it was honest, but emotional, and very much what I was feeling in the moment, which we all know is fleeting. It was about the holidays, and my anniversaries (surviving breast cancer and being sober) and how upset I am about Christmas and feeling like my anniversaries don't mean anything. On the one hand I feel like I should be able to post whatever I want on my own blog. I should be able to say how I'm feeling, right, without worrying about how other people feel about it. I wasn't blaming anyone for the way I feel - I don't do that, blame other people for the things that I feel. I wasn't saying the way I was feeling was right, because what you feel isn't right or ever wrong, it just is what it is. I was just getting it out, venting. I should be able to vent about how I feel, right? Well, I un-posted it so I wouldn't upset anyone. Anyway, that's sort of beside the point I guess, and I am sure there are better ways to deal with things that slapping your feelings on the Internet.

So today I was talking to someone, and expressing my upset about the very things I posted about in that post - my anniversaries, the holidays - I was just expressing how I felt. I wasn't blaming anyone, just venting about it - because like I said, it wasn't right or justified even, it just was what it was. I get sick of people saying you shouldn't feel a certain way. True, I could take action to change the way I feel, but the way I feel it isn't wrong. Well, this person I was talking to, she said something to me, that frankly, really pissed me off. What it was actually, was a reminder of the very thing that my sponsor likes to remind me of - not to judge people. Why - because you don't ever know what someone else's experience is. Actually, the day reading that I did this morning was about this very thing. It said, let the results of someone's actions be the judge. In any event, I've decided not to be friends with this person, because why, at this point in my life and my recovery, would I subject myself to people who treat me in ways I don't like? That would be old behavior. Yes this might seem drastic, but why would I welcome someone into my life who would say to me what this person said? I'm just not going to.

A lot of years ago - I learned this, about being being careful what you say to someone because you don't ever really know what their experiences are. You don't ever really know who you are talking to. You just don't. You just don't know what they have been through, what it feels like to be them, to be in their skin and their head and their life, what their decisions are based on, why they do what they do. You can't know those things. I learned this a lot of years ago, not because of something I said, but because of something someone said to me. That conversation that I had years ago, it changed my perspective. This person that I was talking to today, that changed my perspective also. It really hammered home my sponsor's point about judging people. Because that's what it was, a judgment of sorts, and harsh one. You might say that I can't blame her for a lack of understanding, she doesn't after all, know the whole story. But that isn't a good enough excuse anymore. What she said to me was quite nasty and uncalled for and I am tired of excusing people's bad behavior. I am holding them to a higher standard.

Even on my worst day

I imagine how this blog is starting to sound. One minute everything is great - I'm happy, content, at peace, grateful, life is good, it couldn't be better. The next minute - I sound like I am complaining - I'm devastated, life is miserable and what is this thing called happiness that I can't seem to find? Then it's great again, my job is great, things couldn't be better, I have acceptance, I wouldn't change anything. Then I'm crying on the floor again about why I'm not happy. Are you picking up on the pattern here? My therapist actually suggested that I track this for a while, and that I try to pay more attention to what sends me spiraling downward rather than just acting surprised when I find myself there. Except that it isn't like a downward spiral, it's more like I teleport there. It's like flipping a switch.

I don't have the faintest idea how it happens. One minute I am one way and the next minute I'm not that way anymore. Nothing triggers it really. I guess I'm just used to it. I've cycled through this up and down every few days since I can remember - at least since I was 15. Sometimes the cycle is more than a few days - and it's never extreme - I just hover around the middle. Slightly better than normal, slightly worse, slightly better, slightly worse. Okay, maybe saying that I am devastated on the floor sounds more extreme than slightly - but I don't go very far into depression and I've never been manic. Although one could make a definite argument for depression. Anyway, I'm having a hard time sorting this one out. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the more I work the AA program the better I feel - and though I shouldn't say this - it's like a drug - work the program better, feel better. Which makes me wonder if at least half of feeling bad, if not more, isn't really depression, but instead, just untreated alcoholism

So anyway, today is a good day. If I had to really rate the day, I would say it is a "good day plus." It's not a "plus plus" because I am staying up too late and I have to work all weekend, but it's definitely one plus for being better than average. And I'm talking about the way I feel - I feel good - it's not just that my day was good. Today is one of those days when I feel overwhelmed with gratitude, happy (wait, did I just admit to feeling happy?), content, at peace with the state of things, accepting of the things that have happened to me, my faith is strong and I love AA. I know how it must sound - like I can't make my mind up. Am I grateful or not, happy or not, do I believe in AA or not? Of course I do.

I just have bad days sometimes - I have days where I slip into old ways of thinking and old ways of behaving, where my thoughts and actions are fear based and where I lose sight of the purpose, and can't pick out the details, where I lose myself in the future instead of staying present in the moment. I slip into the me of my former life, like slipping on a different pair of clothes. I just lose perspective sometimes. But even on my worst day, my most negative, and unhappy and miserable day - what I really believe is this - that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. That it saved my life and changed my life and I had nothing to do with it. I have nothing but humility about it. Even on my worst day I am grateful beyond words and I believe deep down to the very core of me that the program works, that miracles will happen right in front of you, and that your life really does become infinitely more amazing than you could have imagined. Even on my worst day I know that I have happiness - it may not look the way I wanted it to or be what I want it to be - but it is there. Even on my worst day, I still believe that anything is possible and that things really will be okay in the end - even if okay doesn't look the way I want it to. Even on those days, I have unshakable faith. And I know that I'm lucky, even on those days - I don't have to be sober, I don't have to go to AA meetings, I don't have to carry the message - I get to. It is a gift.

Congratulations to A. on 30 days sober. You continue to inspire and amaze me.

San Francisco in August

I have this day - at the end of October - that I both don't want to remember and can't seem to forget. It is burned in my memory. It holds a different meaning than it used to in light of the things that I have recently been through. In fact - as the years go by - it becomes more painful, as opposed to less. I would have expected the opposite. The pain sharpens while the rationalization seems less clear and it is all mixed with regret and uncertainty about the future. I always hope that the end of October will come and go unnoticed, but it never does.

So years ago - years after the fact - I wrote something, about that day - it was about that day but it wasn't. I had wanted to replace the day with another memory. I just wanted to remember something else. I can only talk about it here on my blog without actually talking about it, so I'll just post the only thing I ever wrote about that day.

August 23, 2003,

She has spoken only to a limited extent about that day in October. And she has certainly never recorded the words, perhaps never even spoken them aloud. The most she has ever been willing to say is right now – that she remembers the smell of the room, the inappropriate conversation between a mother and her teenage son, what she was wearing, and the absence surrounding the days that followed. She remembers the pain like it happened yesterday and she knows that such intensity is reserved for those moments in life we are meant never to forget. And she knows that she did not belong there because she was the only one in that room not crying. She thinks that it is telling, what we choose to remember. The way we sometimes like to carefully select the words believing that what we are recording is a memory with such precision and such accuracy that it is like a photograph – but distorted in its own way. And it is equally as telling, what we choose not to remember, whether out of a fear that the words will not be enough, or perhaps out of a desire to forget the moment altogether. Things unwritten, but conjured up later in a form all their own. Her memories, like all things, are a fabrication.

She says that day is like San Francisco in August – a night unrecorded in history. Unrecorded, because like that day in October, she wanted there to be no distortions and no mistakes. She uses that night in August as a substitution for the day. She remembers the density of the air and the color of the paint – she could tell you what it felt like, as if that same perfect picture of a San Francisco night in August, could make a day never exist.

What has been lost in the space in between? In the days and the pages that are missing? Not everything is as vivid anymore. She has wondered all this time if she had given up her self respect for him, and has concluded, finally, that what was lost upon those nights, is not in fact regained in the morning. The question for her has always been – how to live through the day that you wake up and realize that you are not who you thought you were – and in so many ways.

She is acutely aware now, like on that day in October, just exactly how every moment, every interaction, can change your life. Those split seconds in time in which a choice is made – to utter the words – to reveal the truth – or to keep the secret. A yes, instead of a no.

At least I am predictable

At least I know that when I feel as good as I did the past few days, that I am going to crash eventually. It's inevitable and predictable, although I never know exactly when it's coming. It's inevitable because this way that I feel - it isn't real - it isn't sustainable. It lasts for maybe a few days and then I cry on my floor, like last night, while I talk to my higher power about what isn't fair and that I do have things to be angry about. And there are simply things that I can't get over. I can only pretend to - for days at a time.

I was talking to my therapist today about just exactly how I see my life. We concluded that I see it as neither good or bad - but that I am just indifferent about it. It's fine I guess - it's okay - I am neither happy nor unhappy. I know it isn't bad - because I objectively know that. I know how other people perceive my life. I just can't for the life of me seem to see it the way that other people do - at least not with consistency.

The expression - you can't see the forest for the trees - I seem to have the opposite problem. The trees are like a blur - the finer details of my life - and if I could see those - if I could pick those out - delineate the edges - I might find things to be happy about. You know - being present in the moment and enjoying the moment - those are details in which I find happiness. But all I see is the forest - all I see is the whole - and on the whole my life is not what I want it to be. It is true that today, right now, my life is fine, my day was fine, there is little about the present moment that I would change. But beyond the day, in the greater scheme of things - nothing is what I want it to be.

Who here is fooled?

I am not an optimistic person. I'm just not. Not at all really. I consider it a character defect, and I work on it. I am mentioning this because this post that I am about to write - it could be a totally different post - it just depends on my perspective. This post could be about what a great and wonderful life I have and how I owe it all to AA. It could be hopeful and happy - but my natural state isn't either of these things and I tend to come at things, I guess I would say, from a darker angle, from the down side - it is all in my approach. Tomorrow I may write that post about how great and wonderful my life is and how I wouldn't trade it in for another life. Sometimes I actually do feel that way. But this is not that post. This isn't the direction from which I am looking at the moment. It could just be the time of year. The fall makes me sad. I got sober in the fall two years ago, the holidays are never happy and it is just a time of reflection for me.

I have had some hesitation to post about just anything and everything lately. I have a sponsee reading this blog - which is fine of course, but I have such hope for her that I don't want to ruin it with my lack of optimism. Sometimes I feel like I am supposed to be this great example of how to work the AA program. Sometimes I am that. Sometimes I fall short of that. Other times, I just fail at that completely. Sometimes I don't try all that hard. I am supposed to be happy, joyous and free - those are the things that we are supposed to want and get from AA. Happy, joyous and free. At the moment I feel like a bad example of those things and I don't want to discourage her. But this blog is the one and only place in my life that I don't censor myself, so I can't start now just for her sake.

Sometimes I worry that we in AA have all fooled ourselves and each other, and that she will find out that we are all just a bunch of fakers and then she will pretend right along with us, maybe, hopefully. Sometimes I think we have actually fooled ourselves to such a degree that we do really believe anything is possible. When in fact, what I feel like telling her, is that this is still just life, and it is difficult and sad and disappointing. I worry sometimes that this amazing life that we tell each other is possible - it is just fiction - it is something we have imagined up for ourselves and we talk all about it like it is happening all around us, because we all need something to hang on to or to look forward to - without which this really would be intolerable wouldn't it? What I should probably remind her of - is that those things - the happy, joyous and free part of life - those things are a choice. That really is the answer to all of this - it lies in what you choose for yourself and this is all about learning how to choose differently.

I do feel those things sometimes, happy, I have even posted about what those times feel like - but my default is laced with negativity and for me to live in a state of serenity, contentment, happiness and hope - requires a very deliberate effort. It is no secret that my mood fluctuates rapidly and that I might wake up tomorrow feeling completely the opposite. It is probably silly really to even post right now, while I feel this way, because I know that it is fleeting. I have learned to pay little attention to my moment to moment feelings because I know they change. But I do think sometimes that even in those moments of optimism and hopefulness, and happiness - what underlies those things is still the same because I am still me.

I have been trying for a while to figure out why I'm unhappy. Is it chemical - should I try taking something again even though it didn't work? Would I just be fooling myself? What is this thing that we all talk about in AA that I have posted about before - a more amazing life than anything you ever could imagine? What is that? A life beyond your wildest dreams. What is that? People always talk about getting these things. I think I have figured it out, and this is going to sound horribly negative probably, but again, tomorrow I might write a different post about the exact same thing. What you get is just a life, no more amazing than the next one, or maybe you get to keep the one you had, and maybe it seems amazing and beyond your wildest dreams, but that is only because you have learned to adjust your expectations - or rather, you have been forced to. Maybe you have let go of your expectations completely. Suddenly what looked intolerable, seems more amazing than anything you could have hoped for. But what underlies it is really the same and it is still disappointing.

My life - it isn't what I expected. Sure, it is amazing, if I look at it independently of those expectations. If you expected nothing, how could you be disappointed? You wouldn't be. This is about changing yourself to meet conditions, that's all. This is about acceptance. You can be happy under any circumstances, you just have to accept it whatever it is. Is my life better than it was 2 years ago when I came into AA? Yes, infinitely. Is it very much the same as it was 2 years ago. Yes. I live in a different city and I have a different job and make a lot more money, but my life is the same. It looks different, drastically in some ways, because I have done just what AA tells you to do - change yourself and your expectations to meet conditions over which you have no control. I think I fool myself sometimes into believing that I have really let go of the things I thought I wanted out of life, but I haven't. I have glimpses of what it is like to feel happy with a life that does not include those things - that does not include finding a man or having children - but I am not actually okay with that. So the happiness is only fleeting and it feels fake to me. It feels contrived.

People have never been able to understand why I would be unhappy with the life that I have - because I have a great job and good career and I'm financially successful - those are the things that other people focus on because those are the things you can easily see. That is only a matter of someone comparing their insides to my outsides though. Trust me - my insides don't match my outsides. It isn't that I am unhappy necessarily. Of course I am grateful, tremendously. I guess I do have AA to thank for the happiness that I do have because it is AA that has enabled me to shift my perspective at all. I am not unhappy with what my life is, I am not disappointed when I think about it. I am not ungrateful. But I am unhappy with what it isn't, and I am definitely disappointed.

Just checking to see if I am still human

If I don't write now, I may not get a chance. I need to just check in - am I alive? I feel like a robot. I mentioned in my last post the ability I have to not feel, and well, to work (literally, work) my way into oblivion. I'm operating on autopilot at the moment. This is the morning of my 8th day of working with no day off, which granted may not seem like a lot - but just given the status of things at the moment, I am expecting another 12 days before I actually get to have even one whole weekend day to myself. I am not complaining (me, complain? Never). All things considered, this happens maybe once every three months and that's really not bad at all. I am tired though.

I just go through the motions. 6:20 get up, 7:45 get to work, 8:00 read blogs, 8:30 start working, 7:30 finish working, go home, eat, email, return phone calls, go to bed, get up, do it again. Sometimes there is a meeting squeezed in there. I have to say - despite the level of stress I am feeling, I am handling it pretty well. I have to think it can only be because the number of meetings I am attending isn't suffering at the moment. Because I have been helping someone new, I have been going to more meetings than I normally would in the middle of being this busy at work. When I am at work 11 or 12 hours a day, and working Saturday and Sunday, something has to give. Usually it is the number of meetings I get to. This time though - I am sacrificing a bit of work time to be there for someone new - which is a good thing.

But I don't feel very human when I work like this. I did cry though. Yesterday, in Target. I went there at 7 on my way home from work. I was tired. I cried because someone died yesterday while running the marathon (which was cancelled about half way through because of the heat and only 4,000 of 24,000 runners crossed the finish line). It made me terribly sad to think about his family and all those people who trained for it. And then I thought about my mother and it was like my heart seized up and turned to stone. Rock solid and impenetrable. I was trying to figure out why I have had no reaction to our last conversation and the possible end of our "relationship."

The truth is - there is nothing there to miss. The absence of my mother feels, well, it feels the same as the presence of my mother. I've taken care of myself since I was a little kid. For a brief moment when I thought about what that would mean to never talk to my mother again - I thought - oh my god, I don't have a mother, what am I going to do? The same thing I have always done. Take care of myself as if I don't have a mother. I was thinking - you can miss what you have never had - you know the nice happy family with the happy stories, the really great parents who are supportive and there for you and loved you and took care of you. I can miss that - but it is really only the idea of it that I am missing. I don't even know what that looks like and I can't even really imagine it or articulate what it would have felt like to have that. I just miss the idea of things, that's all. But I don't really know what I'm missing. I only know what I know.

The truth is, everything is the same - in her presence or her absence. I am the same - and I am not lost. I felt a little bad for feeling so cold - for feeling like I didn't care. I felt like I should react, I should be devastated. I am not devastated. If I am anything - it is only sad for her, and even that is difficult to come by because the misery she lives in is of her own making. Maybe it's okay - to feel like I don't care. And to think about her makes me grateful because I have been blessed with a gift that she doesn't have - which is my sobriety. I have also been blessed with the knowledge that I have a choice to live differently. Not only do I know it is a choice, but I have been blessed with ability to choose differently and to live my life differently than she has and it is amazing to actually be able to put that choice into action. The irony of that - is that my mother always used to say - you always have a choice. Everything is a choice - you always have choices. That might be the one and only thing I learned from my mother.

During the pause

I am taking a second - to breathe, to asses how I feel, to asses my mental state, to check my connection to my higher power (which, oddly, is missing). When things get crazy at work and I lose myself in the midst of what feels like chaos, I really have to make a conscious effort to check in and see just exactly what is going on with me. It can be easy for me to go for weeks, or a month even with no real awareness of myself. I just go through the motions. I often find, in that moment when I pause - that things aren't what they seem - my reality and actual reality are not the same thing - and I also find that I am right in the middle of trying to ignore or avoid something. It doesn't take alcohol, or anything for that matter, for me to check out for a while. It's automatic and unconscious even. I don't realize until I come out of it, where I've been. I repeatedly have those moments where I think wow - I don't think I have felt anything in like a month.

My stress level is pretty high at the moment. I haven't had the greatest week - between the stress of my job, the fight I am in with Volkswagen, the aftermath of the situation with my mother (I'm still waiting for that to hit me, aren't I going to have an emotional reaction to this?), and last Friday when I almost drank...when I actually stop to think about how I feel, I don't feel great, which isn't surprising. I feel tremendously stressed and on edge. I guess if you look at the situation from a higher, broader level - everything is fine, great actually. But down here where I'm at, in the moment to moment, it feels sort of unbearable and like it's never going to end. My natural tendency is to look for immediate relief. My tendency is not to want to go through the feeling, it is to go around it or avoid it altogether if possible. I'll go through the experience - just so long as I don't have to associate any emotion with it. That is how I have always survived. There is a just a disconnect between what I experience and what I feel associated with my experiences. You might say the feeling part is lacking altogether.

People tell me that I tell the story of surviving breast cancer as if I am reporting the story of someone else going through it - as if I have no emotional connection. I would say that is quite accurate. I really don't feel much of a connection to that experience. I have only bits and pieces of emotion here and there that I associate with certain things that happened during those 7 months. I have anger over some things, I have sadness, I have mostly fear, but, for the most part, like all things, I have compartmentalized the pieces and removed myself almost completely from the situation. I was there right, I must have been. Or was I just working 50 hours a week and pretending to be somewhere else? If it weren't for the fact that my hair is still shorter than it used to be, and if I didn't have a physical reminder every time I take my shirt off - I think I could seriously convince myself that it never happened. Much like my childhood actually - my brother and I will tell stories and there always seem to be a lot of things I don't remember. It's like I wasn't there - and in fact, in a lot of ways - I don't think I was.

That's how I feel right now - not here. I do this sometimes, where I let my job consume me. I just let it swallow me. It wasn't planned, it just happens that I have a major deadline on a major project and the whole thing is riding on me. And while I am not enjoying the stress of it or knowing that I will be working all month with little break, even on the weekends, part of me thought - ahhhhhh - here's a little relief. This is what it's like to escape from myself, to escape from the emotion - it is to be somewhere else completely while physically present in front of you. It's like a drug sort of. I've learned though to both love that and hate that about my job. It's like dreading the up-swing of my mood which can change pretty rapidly, because I know there can only be a down swing to follow. There is no easy way to come off of the high of working like I'm working and the stress that goes with it. The only way is to crash. I love it and I hate all at the same time.

It's different this time though - I don't usually realize that I've been in a period of total avoidance of myself and my emotions until I crash, somehow surprised every time that it's happening. It hits like a tidal wave and knocks me over. I'm more aware of it this time. I know there is something there and I'm stuffing it. So aware that I paused yesterday for a second - it was like flipping a switch - just to see what, if anything, I am not processing. And there it was - in that pause, all I could think was - but I'm still not happy. I had written all those posts about why I can't just be happy - what is wrong with me that I can't just be happy? And when you strip it all away, my job, the stress, the money, my car, my friends, my family, there is a very definite hole, a very definite emptiness. You take those things away from me, all those things that I am trying almost frantically to lose myself in the midst of - you take them away and there isn't anything left. Something is missing.