for anyone keeping track:

1. we traded in the p.o.s. 1996, 198k monte carlo for a silver 2004 dodge intrepid with 38k on it.  so in love!

2. we had a gas leak yesterday.  everyone is okay.  gas company had to be called, they came and found the leak (behind the stove) and shut it off.  now we can't use oven or stove until it's fixed.  not like we ever used it anyway.  now at least we have an excuse to eat out 7 days a week!

3. i haven't seen my therapist for about a month, and it's okay.  i'm on hiatus.  it's kind of nice to not spend so much time focusing on my problems.

4. we currently have 6 foster cats.  a litter of 4 that is 8 wks old, a 6mo old girl with cerebellar hypoplasia, and a 5yr old 18lb tabby with infected eyes.  lots of work, lots of love.


.

yesterday, i was grocery shopping and my mind was sort of wandering as i walked around.  first i thought about how weird it would be if i saw dawn at the grocery store.  but then i realized that i probably would never see her at this particular grocery store because she doesn't like it because it's so big (not something you would normally know about your therapist, but after 6 yrs, we've discussed EVERYTHING). 
then i thought about someone else, an old friend who i hadn't seen in a LONG time.  i felt really bad about not seeing her, but i had tried to contact her and never heard back.  honestly, i assumed she was dead.  the last time i spoke to her (4 yrs ago), she told me about how her liver transplant had gone into rejection the year before.  so she crossed my mind, as someone who was from the past, and i assumed i'd never see her again.  it was a sad thought, but not necessarily a new one.
anyway, after i was done grocery shopping, we went across the street to the pet supply store to get dog food.  i took charlie in with me, and it was an adoption day so we were standing around and looking at the foster cats, when all of a sudden i hear someone say, hi charlie!  i turn around and dawn is there!  so weird.  omg hi and all that. 
a couple minutes later, she's gone, and i hear someone else say, "emily???"  i turn around and it's THE FRIEND WHO I THOUGHT WAS DEAD!!!!  :)

charlie and i saw dawn today, which has helped, as it usually does.
so much bile pulsing through my veins.  i don't know what else to say right now.
i'll think of something.

talking to dawn earlier, i really lost my composure.  i cried.  and cried and cried for the better part of an hour.  put myself together long enough to walk out the door, along the sidewalk, and down to a picnic table under some trees around the side of the building to sit and wait for sheila to pick me up.
i'm so drained.  mentally exhausted.  i don't often deal with such depth of emotion... i try not to experience it in doses so strong as that, even though i probably should.  it's just a matter of how much comes out at the same time... how many doors are open at once.
it was enough.  too much.
i'm going back on thursday.

one of the issues that i was VERY worried about has been resolved.  if i had only called community mental health sooner, i wouldn't have spent 2 weeks freaking out about not having med coverage.  i feel like an idiot, but it's all good.

i'm going back to brachypelmic's house on monday to stay with her animals while she's at bonnaroo with d3p3ch3mod3.  i'll be taking ziggy, charlie and larrypimp with me.  it will be nice to have some (more) time away.  after i started settling into a routine down there last week, it was so good for me.  not having internet or cable tv = me seeing more sunshine and reading more books.  i'm going to take pen and paper down there too, and see if anything spills out of my brain.

i'm going to see dawn on friday.  it's been a couple weeks since i've seen her, and it'll be a couple weeks more after that until i see her again.  i repeat the mantra in my head, "i am not dependent on my therapist, i am not dependent on my therapist..."  do i believe myself?  yes, to a certain extent.  i'll be okay, i know.  the part that bothers me most is that having a break like this causes some issues to have to be started in on all over again... out of sight, out of mind, you know?  also i feel that she's one of the few people who understands me and can read me when i'm bullshitting and saying everything's okay.  and it's nice to be around someone who knows, intuitively, that i usually need far more than i will ever ask for.



emc
May, 2007
Little Cities
Kalamazoo, MI

hello.
i have so much bullshit going on right now.  i'm trying to keep my head above water.  my brain has responded by pushing ALL of it away, for pretty much 23 hours each day.  and for that 1 hr that i'm actually thinking seriously about it, i am unable to think about more than 1 problem at a time.  literally unable.  i'm grateful for my head for making that small effort at self-preservation.  it helps.  everything is just too huge.
i'm reading a really overwhelming book that's sort of keeping me up on the edge too.  but it's something i need to read, for myself, because i need to have things IN my fucking life instead of pushing them away all the time until they build up and i explode with no apparent cause.



emc
May, 2007
Back Alley Art
Kalamazoo, MI

things are starting to go pretty shittily in my head again during the past several days.  the temptation to do something really fucking stupid and self-destructive (not kill myself though... and not drinking and not using) is so strong because i have been really neglecting my need to communicate how i fucking feel.  i'm really really bad at asking for help.  but definitely, i'm not feeling stable right now, nor am i feeling very much like dealing with it in a mature manner.  3 different things, all relatively significant, have been affecting me, and i haven't talked about any of them to anyone.  i suppose that's what i get, huh?  i don't care to get into the details here... i have therapy tomorrow...
i fell asleep and missed charlie's vet appointment this afternoon.  i assumed i would wake up when the maintenance guy came back to my place, as i told him i would only be home until 3.  well, he never came back, so i didn't wake up until 5:30ish.  all of my other planned commitments went okay today.  saw my psychiatrist this morning, saw my grandma tonight with alice... that went better than i expected, and we're planning on visiting her every week now.
we have a hole in the ceiling in our bathroom.  to make a long story short... the guy upstairs needs new sealant around his bathtub.  his water was dripping into our bathroom whenever he took a shower.  that's gonna be a several day project for the maintenance guy, which pisses me off because i just feel like spending several days in bed.  see now why i have charlie?  :P

charlie and i had a very nice walk tonight.  the rain was just finishing up outside, and it was in the 60's, i think.
we saw 2 pair of canada geese that already have goslings!  they're getting an early start this year.
the other day we saw turtles and a beaver dam.  and a couple days before that we saw at least half a dozen deer grazing in a field at sunset.  they ran away when they saw us, and the rest of the walk home, in the dark, i was afraid that we were gonna get attacked by some big horny psychotic buck out of nowhere.
we have nice places to walk :)
charlie's foster mom, brachypelmic, came to visit last week.  charlie and syd were so happy to see each other.  we walked through a nice park and syd got to see charlie's fake-out peeing trick that he seems to have developed i taught him.  i think she got some good pics too.  i will post them here or link to them when she gets them online.
charlie has been living with us for a month now :)

our local UHL team, kalamazoo wings, are in the eastern conference finals for the colonial cup.  we saw them play flint a couple weeks ago, and we're going to see them play muskegon this week.  i love going to hockey games.  best. sport. ever.

does anyone know why i woke up with sore pecs this morning?
i can't figure it out.

neeners is in my lap, getting kisses and cuddles.

pork got his re-check urinalysis today, but it'll be another day, maybe two, for the vet to call with the results (really dumb, as a UA takes less than ten minutes).

i'm seeing my therapist again tomorrow.
i look forward to seeing her.  is that wrong?  i don't think so.  at some point i came under the assumption that therapy wasn't supposed to be something enjoyable.  but it's okay.  it's not like it's a party or anything.  i just crave that deep connection, and the nurturing that i need at that level.  i don't feel like that part of me is acknowledged anywhere else in my life (95% my own fault).  so i go see dawn and i cry and freak out and all that other shit, but it's cathartic.

the end.

last night's dream:
i had some sort of sickness.  i felt weak and tired, and every couple of hours my fever would spike and i would lose awareness.  i was told that i was actually hallucinating at these times.  a strange sort of hallucination, one that i could not recall after it was over.  one during which i was supposedly saying things and believing things that were not true.
my illness was thought to be life-threatening.  i was at the hospital, but didn't have a room.  i was just walking around.  i was there to visit my mom.  my friends were worried about me, but my family did not care because they were busy worrying about my mom.  my mom thought i was overreacting.  i wanted to believe her but my friends kept telling me that i needed to be seriously worried about myself.

an interpretation:
this dream actually only has 2 people in it, my mother and myself.  my friends and family are both representative of different teams in my head.
the illness represents what i am going through in psychotherapy.  when the "fever" (the intense work) comes to a head, i "hallucinate" things that are not true (i remember things that i quickly discredit).  in the dream, i am not aware of consciously experiencing these memories.  only my "friends" (other parts of myself) are aware of their content, and assure me that none of it is true, yet encourage me to get help with the illness itself.  i listen to them, and i assume that my hallucinations are not a big deal so there is no reason to know or remember.
having the "hallucinations" (memories) remain buried, and ignored whenever they try to surface, is killing me.  i am heading in the right direction to heal (being in the hospital) but haven't quite committed or learned how to engage (i don't have a room).  i am still distracted by my mother's needs and influences and my propensity to tend to her before myself.  my "family" (different parts of myself) believes that i am overreacting and reinforces my obligations to my mother. 
so i am torn and so so so mixed up inside, with very strong parts of myself pulling me in all directions, and the constant presence of my mother, to whom i probably ascribe more power than she actually has, knocking around inside my head.  all of it makes me ill and threatens my ability to exist in reality.

i'm so frustrated that i'm about to cry.  and you know why?  because i can't find my local on-demand cable listings online.
that's just pathetic.
something's building in me and i don't feel right.
when i saw dawn on friday, we talked about something other than what we have been spending most of our time on recently (you know, the kid stuff).  and it was nice to have a break from all that deep shit.  but it's catching up to me.  it won't be ignored.  it needs to come out.
i have been losing my temper today.  and the night before last, i felt... a nostalgic sort of not-goodness.  i don't want to go there.
but who knows... it could be all on account of my period starting soon.
i hope that's it.

last night's dream:

i was really upset over some major conflict with my parents (lots of yelling and screaming and crying going on), and i emailed my therapist about it because i thought she would get an email sooner than a voice mail.  when i finally got in to see her, the only thing she was concerned about was how i got her email address.  then she started talking, spewing out some crap that i already heard and knew, that had nothing to do with the situation i was in.  she wasn't listening to me.

it reminded me of when my mom was volunteering at the resource center, and she tried to taunt me by telling me she had dawn's email address.  i could tell she wanted me to take the bait and ask her what it was, but i refused to because a) i wasn't going to play that game, and b) i really didn't care to know anyway.
my mom's therapist, pam, had given out her home phone number, at which point my mom immediately figured out where she lived and drove past her house several times.  then again, my mom was never really all that great with boundaries, and i don't think she even realized it.
i'm perfectly happy with the boundaries between me and my therapist.  i always know what to expect, and it makes me respect and trust her as a reliable person who's not going to change the rules every 5 minutes.  consistency always helps me feel less anxious.

anyway, i think the dream is about being frustrated that i'm not communicating very well.  how can i expect people to listen and provide relevant feedback if i'm not being genuine?  it's not necessarily a reflection of any shortcoming on the part of my therapist so much as i associate it with my lack of being good enough, strong enough, fast enough, courageous enough, and trying hard enough.  i feel like i am failing to connect because i haven't completely engaged in the process.

and i don't want to bring this up, either, because i don't want to spend the entire next session talking about the issues surrounding the issues below the issues behind the issues.  i want to get on with it, charge through it, chew it up, and spit it out.  i want an emotional enema.

i just finished re-reading Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom a few days ago.   there was a passage near the middle of the book that i particularly related to, so i dog-eared the page to come back to it after i finished reading the rest of the book.  then yesterday, i went back to that page and read that section again, and realized that it's the same passage that i had identified with the first time i read the book, several years ago.  i think that means it's worth putting up here.

A series of distorted prisms block the knowing of the other.  Before the invention of the stethoscope, a physician listened to the sounds of life with an ear pressed against a patient's rib cage.  Imagine two minds pressed tight together and, like paramecia exchanging micronuclei, directly transferring thought images; that would be union nonpareil.
Perhaps in some millennium, such unions will come to pass -- the ultimate antidote for isolation, the ultimate scourge of privacy.  For now, there exist formidable barriers to such mind coupling.
First, there is the barrier between image and language.  Mind thinks in images but, to communicate with another, must transform image into thought and then thought into language.  That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous.  Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional hues -- all are lost when image is crammed into language.
Great artists attempt to communicate image directly through suggestion, through metaphor, through linguistic feats intended to evoke some similar image in the reader.  But ultimately they realize the inadequacy of their tools for the task.  Listen to Flaubert's lament in Madame Bovary:

Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

(pp 180 - 181)

this passage sticks with me because i can relate to the frustration of trying to express oneself in a language that seems to fall short of the indescribable feelings that lie within.  this happened most recently on wednesday, during my hearing.  i felt like language failed me (although it was partly my brain's fault too) because i had the answers for the judge but couldn't form them into cohesive statements, and there was so much that i wished i had said after i left.  i forgot at least half of myself, and the other half, i couldn't find words for.  it also happens in therapy quite often.  i feel unable to express myself.  the words are so inadequate that i feel like i'm lying.

i'm seeing my psychiatrist again in two days.  this is the big he's-changing-my-meds-against-my-will appointment.  i haven't brought this up with my therapist recently because i'm tired of talking about it.  i've learned that how i feel about it is irrelevant.

i'm seeking the services of a hypnotist.

so i saw my therapist at 3pm today.
back up.
i was really anxious this morning. so anxious that i almost called and canceled, but then i figured that if i stayed home, i'd probably just continue feeling like shit all day. but if i made myself go out and at least talk to dawn, i had a pretty good shot of feeling better later in the day.
so i left around 1pm, caught the bus downtown. paid on my library fines, got some OJ from the food co-op, and waited for my transfer.
and then i saw my therapist. and we talked about my dreams from the other night, and how the cats represent abandonment and the baby is my inner child and blah blah blah. (this is all more true than i care to admit right now, because there are certain emotions that i only let myself feel with dawn, and no one else sees them).
and we talked about my yearning for a mother-type person, that goes way back. i started seeking mother figures around the age of 12 or 13, and never really stopped, in some ways. trying to get some of the things that i never got from my real mother. protection and loyalty, etc. unconditional love. and we talked about how, therapeutically, the traditional thing to do in my situation now would be to learn how to provide those feelings to myself, but goddamn. she says there is still some legitimate need to feel those things from forces beyond myself, because the void is so deep. it's crazy how many of my dreams involve searching for someone to love me, take care of me, console me, protect me, care about me, stick up for me, keep me safe, etc. i feel so fucking needy. i AM so fucking needy.
and then we talked about living in the past. i actually brought this one up myself, toward the end of the hour, because it was something that i had been thinking about recently. i am well aware that i spend an unreasonable amount of time living in the past, and that there are so many wounds that i have not even begun to address, and if i put it all behind me now, it would still be there and come out in some other way. but i think about leelanau, especially, EVERY DAY. and i think about my mom. always my mom. i have very few plans or goals for the future, expect to be with sheila and take care of our animals. anything else is consistently overwhelming. (i have been waiting on an appeal date for social security disability benefits for nearly three years now).
anyway...
greg drove me home after he got out of work. i was expecting sheila to be here after she got out of work at 5, but i just remembered she goes straight to her 6pm class and isn't home until almost 9. her new job at borgess is going well. at least as far as one can tell after the first day!
it's pretty damn cold. we have some sort of advisory or watch or warning that involves snow and wind and coldness or something. they're pretty much all the same. they all mean, "stay inside".

these past few days have been uneventful. i finished up my bake sale stuff on friday night, then sheila took it in for me on saturday morning. i don't remember the rest of the day.
i don't really remember yesterday either.

but i feel like i should stick some words here.

earlier tonight, sheila dropped me off at the chinese buffet that she doesn't like anymore, and i ate while she went to petsmart. chinese food can be sooo satisfying. they used to have these mushroom caps that were stuffed with cream cheese, and it was one of my favorite items on the buffet, but when i was there they had the same thing only with chicken instead of cream cheese :( but that's okay, because i found other good stuff to eat. and i had bananas & PUDDIN' for dessert :)

i have therapy tomorrow and i am completely unprepared as far as having any idea of what i'd like to discuss. these are the more dangerous (productive) sessions, because we get to talking about stuff that i don't want to talk about in the first place. so many things holding me back because i am scared to let them out in the open...

i am in need of gay manly advice, so i am going to go email gr-to-the-egg.

last night i slept on 2 trazodone because i was tired at the end of the day... pretty much normal hours, but a bit on the low side and restless too. i got up to pee 3 or 4 times. i remember waking up once in the night and not being able to fall back asleep for quite a while, but i couldn't see the clock.
so when i fell asleep this afternoon, i didn't wake up for 6 hrs. which means... i'm a bit out of whack again. i need to figure out why i'm not sleeping nights like i should be to begin with. that's what is at the root of all this. and at the root of the root? oh, plenty of crap that is totally unrelated to sleep in any sort of direct way (depressionanxietyhatehurthatehurtlovefearlifedeath? naaaaaaaaah!).
i'm taking a suggestion from my therapist (is that what she's for?) and have applied to do some volunteer work. i just sent an application to the spca of sw michigan. i'm kind of excited/nervous about that, and trying to just let it be in my brain at this point... not running away in terror just yet. i keep reminding myself that i don't have to explain anything that i don't want to go into detail about. i've got nothing to prove, and the less they know about me, the better. besides, there's no use freaking out before i even hear back from them!
and, for anyone paying attention... the nachos earlier? they ruled.

i dunno.
i really should see my therapist tomorrow. i should get up, shower, comb my hair, walk to the bus stop, etc. but right now, in my head, i'm just whining and pouting and stomping my feet and yelling, "I DON'T WANNA!".
it's beautiful.
and so mature.
i feel like shit.
i'm so tired of it.
not very much of me cares enough to pull myself together.
last night, i fell asleep at 6am.
then i woke suddently at 8am BECAUSE my body odor smelled like DONUTS. my inner thoughts went something like this: *sniff sniff* oooooh, donuts! ... wait, that's my pit juice :(
it was so disappointing.
back to sleep not very much later, and i slept until 6pm.
now it is 12 hours later. i'm not tired, but hoping i can get that way soon.

i had a therapist appointment for yesterday afternoon, but i called and canceled. i said something about sleep, meds, being unbalanced, etc.
and the deal is: my sleep is so fucked up. the other day, i took my pills at midnight, including the trazodone which usually puts me right to sleep. i wasn't able to fall asleep until 6am, when i gave in and took more (2x dose) trazodone. then i slept most of the day, of course. i can't seem to stay awake for any longer than 7 or 8 hours, usually less during the day time. but when the night comes and it's time to be asleep, of course i can't sleep at all.
as a result, i'm missing random doses of meds because i never know when i'm coming or going. i take meds twice a day, once in the morning and once at bedtime. well, if i wake up at 4am, or after only a few hours of sleep, i don't take them right then because i'm still intending on going back to sleep. and if i wake up later, and it's dark by that time, it doesn't occur to me to take morning meds when it's dark outside. and if i fall asleep halfway through the day, i can't take my bedtime meds then because i always have the intention of taking just a nap, but then i'll wake up in a couple hours and still not take my morning meds, because now it's 9pm or whatever, and on and on...
my bedtime meds seem to be taken pretty much consistently, meaning every day, though not even close to being at the same time every day. but my trazodone, which is supposed to help me sleep, is not working very well anymore. i'm supposed to take 150-300 mg at bedtime. that stopped working so i took more and more... last night i was up to 900 mg before i fell asleep. i'm sure it's not good for me, but i am keeping an eye on it, as far as knowing the levels at which an overdose will occur and how much is safe to use in certain situations, etc.
anyway, with all this shit... extremely erratic sleep patterns and getting meds mixed up... it really messes with my head... my moods, my emotions, my reactions, my level of functioning. i'm so unbalanced and feeling completely crazy and depressed.
i've been wearing the same shirt, pants, and underwear (!!) since saturday. i haven't showered since then and i haven't left the house since then. i probably shouldn't have gone anywhere on saturday to begin with, because i think i may have lost my wallet in the process.
and yesterday, it just wasn't happening. shower, walk to the bus stop, go to therapy? i didn't even make it to the closet.
okay, so i'm depressed. and each day, i'm at varying degrees of denial over that.
my therapist said she could reschedule for friday afternoon. i haven't returned her call yet to verify either way. part of me is tempted to just disappear from her radar for a while. i've been under such a cloud for so long that it feels like i'm not getting anything accomplished because i'm just going through the motions every day. my affect is starting to dull and i can't go either way. honest, expressive emotion is beyond my grasp. i don't care enough to get up, take a shower, walk to the bus stop, spend 1.5 hrs on the bus, and see my therapist. it just doesn't seem worth it because i've convinced myself that it won't make a difference and it's dangerous to be out alone anyway. too much vulnerability. too many people seeing me. i want to be invisible.
i need some refills on my prescriptions and i've been putting off calling it in for a couple weeks now just because the pharmacist is friendly and calls me by my name. a friendly response would be in order from me, but it's too overwhelming and painful.
some other things are adding to this misery, like the food issues that are becoming more and more dangerous for me as i try to climb in the other direction. old habits die hard. god, i feel so fucked up. the obsessions won't leave me alone.
plus, i'm really anxious about seeing my psychiatrist again, but that doesn't happen until march. i guess i have 6 more weeks to dread it. and i've pretty much given up on advocating for myself with him. it's no use. i just have hate for him every time i think about it, and i fear him because he has made it clear that he will do whatever he wants with me. but i can't argue anymore. the fight has been beaten out of me. the community mental health system isn't designed with the rights of the individual consumer in mind. the system is designed to just barely maintain mentally ill people, herding them around in an unwelcoming and ill-prepared society as inexpensively as possible.

so. friday was my 4yr anniversary of being clean & sober. and i started thinking about what my therapist always talks about around this time of year. she wants me to rehash my reasons and motivations, etc. she wants me to feel... proud? or something. and it just doesn't feel right anymore, getting on a high horse about how disciplined i am, because it's been so much of a non-issue for me the past couple of years. and i guess that's good news for other people who are struggling with it right now, but i tend to feel like i'm cheating or something. i don't give myself the credit that other people give me.
4 years ago, so many things just fell into place, almost overnight. i lost my source of $$ (read: drugs). twice. i lost the roof over my head. i lost my dignity. i lost the safe but crazy-making confines of a long-term, volatile relationship. i lost my best friend. i lost my self-respect. i lost the roof over my head again.
there is a different story behind each of the above statements. some of the stories are so fucked up, you'd never believe me if i tried to explain. yet for all of those things, i am lucky.
but the most important story is this: i lost the ability to believe my own lies.
i was so alone. more than i had ever been before and more than i have ever been since. drugs and alcohol were all i had left to lean on, and i had tricked myself into thinking that i couldn't go on without them. more than that even, i was just plain suicidal and had to do a great deal of verbal backtracking, making lies to cover lies, just to keep myself out of the hospital.
after a while, i just relinquished control. i knew i couldn't run my life at that point. my first option was to die, but then i met one of those people and had one of those conversations. she was only doing her job, but she'll never know how much of a difference it made to me. she convinced me that i could give up, as long as i let someone else be in charge for a while, rather than killing myself.
so what keeps me clean & sober today? even when i'm really not doing well at all, with depression, anxiety, etc... especially at those times, i just don't have the energy to fuck around with that shit anymore.
it would take SO MUCH time, energy, and effort to justify using or drinking all over again. and if i were to relapse, i know the very first snort or hit or sip would bring on so much emotional chaos just over the issue of relapse alone that it wouldn't be worth it.
plus there's the fact that i'd like to avoid quitting again at all costs. but this rationale applies mostly to my sordid love-affair with nicotine.
sometimes i wonder if i will ever really be free of addictive behaviors though. just as i wouldn't have spoken of my using and drinking in a negative light several years ago, so now do i bite my tongue.
everything is okay (please don't believe me), but the Crave never goes away...

i still exist on the internet.

i'm ashamed to report that i have been checking myspace more than LJ lately. really, it sucks, but i know more IRL friends on myspace now. though still, i don't write there. it just doesn't feel right. like i'd be cheating on LJ.

i've been chasing around cherie's kid quite a bit. 13 y/o girl. she never lets me sit on my ass. probably a good thing. she's a complex creature. the whole thing has been good, though, for everyone involved.

my mom made contact via alice a couple weeks ago. she sent a gift with a note card. thinking of you. it wouldn't have been half as bad if it hadn't been in her handwriting. i don't know what it is. the script is more personal than the words themselves. the entire event sent me to dawn's at the last minute for a nervous breakdown. me = worst person in the world... and mom = innocent victim. an hour later, having gotten it out of my system, i moved on like nothing had happened.

obviously, it was significant. but i'll be doing well when the day comes that i can deal with a situation for more than a few hours at a time... admit that i have long-term problems... bring myself face-to-face with them at will and let myself work at it. i have so many fucking brick walls up and they have come to create a maze... it feels like i have very little control over which direction i go at any given time.

i seem so fucking stable sometimes because nothing gets expressed. in the long run, i am caught off guard and 10x more vulnerable when the collapse comes. and it comes, for sure.

my 2 states of mind are emotionally constipated and emotional diarrhea.

yeah, so this isn't what i came here to write about.

i'm just checking in to say that i'm pretty okay lately, given things happening and not happening. i'm spending lots of time with friends. they are the family i have chosen for myself. i'm actually finding them to be more supportive and caring than any of my blood relatives ever were.