The eternal fight

Cat on a Ledge |  255/365

 

You want something better for yourself, a better life, for starters. But triggers, memories and flashbacks bring you falling down time and again. You get up , and fall down, ad nauseam.

How long can this go on? Ad nauseam? You don’t want to conceive of that possibility.

You want to remain employable, be a better friend, get a dog. You have a job, but you always fear being found out as truly belonging in the loony bin, and you know you need to work on being a better friend. And so many things have to happen before you can get a dog. It all seems so out of your league, so meant for others, but not for you.

On good days you reach and reach and reach into the depths of your soul, and yank out the oomph you need to keep you going, keep you from falling off the edge.

On bad days you stare at the edge of ledge and wonder …

STOP THE LEAKING

I am a baby, a cry baby. There is no denying it, and I hate it. I loathe it all day. It just is incredibly inconvenient to me to be such a cry baby. Today at work we were talking about the ins and outs of forming a board for an appeal that needs to be heard. I made a suggestion about one way of selecting members for this group, and this guy just said to me, “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” I was stunned. I felt metaphorically slapped. Trust me, I recognize that most peeps aren’t as sensitive as I am.

Then I had to wait while my boss spent 25 minutes talking with a co-worker about the tragedy of her Christmas tree falling over this weekend. She saw me waiting outside her door, and waved me into her office, but then proceeded to continue this personal conversation with a coworker for nearly a half hour! If I had known it would take that long I would have gone back to my desk. I was just waiting to see if she had any guidance on how to get the damn thing done. Well, by the time I was able to ask her my question about the stupid issue I just started getting all teary. I did not realize that I was still upset by the dumb guy’s comment, and that’s what probably got me teary. But … Ugh!!! I really hate that, especially since I know that she looks down on people who cry. She does not care for it. She treated me fine, but it blows that I’ve heard her make disparaging remarks about people who cry. It just feels humiliating.

It probably did not help that she had me stand there for nearly a half hour while she yammered about something else with a coworker.  Still, I wish I was less sensitive. When things like this happen I start to feel like I’m in elementary school again, and even the teachers called me a cry baby.

I wish I had a STOP THE LEAKING button any time I start feeling like I am going to cry, but don’t want to cry. Such a thing would be incredibly handy to me.

?!?!?!?!?!

I have to get rid of the cacophony of noise in my head. Everyone is all stirred up, and I am out of options for calming everyone down. It’s times like this that I really wonder why I try so hard. I used to drink to get rid of the triggers. I had sex to excess, and that addiction helped me ignore the dissociation. Four years ago I gave up drinking and addictive sex. Now that I don’t have those crutches everything is horribly visible to me. I can hear and feel everything. In a way I am glad I did not have the knowledge of how it would be at the time I decided to quit. I may not have quit if I had known it would be like this.

The truth is that I am just holding on, and I am not even sure why. Why hold on? So that I can be in the same damn spot a year from now?

Someone inside of me wants to die, and I have to tell you that it becomes harder and harder to talk sense into them. I just numbly ignore the desire and go about my day, but it’s always there in the back of my head, gnawing and wanting to be done.

It is all a ruse, an act. I’m hardly sane. I just go through the motions, acting the part of normal human being. But, really, it is not real. What is real is in my head, and it is not for public consumption. It’s hardly for my own consumption.

I feel like I am out of options, out of choices. I see Doc in the morning. Whoop de doo. I’m not happy with him either.

I have to sleep, and I am not up for it. I am even annoying myself with how much of a prickly pear I am today.

God, give me a clue as to what I am supposed to be doing because I have no flipping idea.