Oh please no

Sprightly, you dance your little limbs across the carpet, headed for the next sheltered area under the laundry. Wobbly on the fibers, you seem to rattle as you run.

"Cockroach! I get it." said David.

My first reaction was to stare. I couldn't think of what to do next, though I knew it had to get far from me. He crushed it with his boot and left to go back to his business at the front desk. And there it sat. Crushed, but still visibly a cockroach. I reached out quickly with my shoe and smeared it across the carpet, sweeping the remains under the counter.

And then it happened: my skin started to crawl. I can feel it on the bottom of my shoe. There's a spot now that feels different than the rest of my foot. I keep turning to look at the wet spot its death left and wondering if there are more coming.

I've gotten better about cockroaches. I'm not afraid of bugs, in fact, I used to collect beetles, but I hate, HATE cockroaches. In an LSD fueled haze one time I saw giant, hissing Madagascar cockroaches crawling all over each other in the corner of a room. I was so petrified that I couldn't move: I just wanted to scream and hide, which I did - in the opposite corner of the room - until I could get enough courage to run.

Life here will never be the same. Now I know they're out there, waiting. One could come out from under the counter at any time. One could be living somewhere in the store and jump out at me. I need to find some spray....

F.E.A.R.

I love this. I've heard the first version before, but never the second:

Fear: Fuck everything and run.

Or

Fear: Face everything and recover.

I'm on version one. I'm trying to run. Well, I'm not. My sponsor says bring your body and your mind will follow. My body is hitting two meetings a day and walking on the other side of the street when I see a bar or a liquor store. My body is drinking diet Coke and taking its meds on time. My body had cookies for lunch.

My brain is screaming: "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING!? RUN!!!"

I'm feeling a little crazy right now. I'm kinda moving moment by moment between really high and really low. It's called rapid cycling, which who knows if that's what it really is, but let's go with it for the sake of the post. So I'm up one minute - mind racing, can't think, can't eat, want to smoke like a mad woman. I feel like my skin is crawling and my eyes are the size of dinner plates. I see trails (like when you're on acid) behind moving things like vehicles. The lights in my office are WAY too bright, and all the colors are vibrant.

Then all of a sudden I feel like I need to crawl under my desk and ball my little eyes out. I feel like San Francisco when the fog comes crawling up over the Richmond district and envelops the rest of the City slowly but surely. I feel like I'm the Financial District; watching it come for me and not being able to do anything because I'm fixed in place like a 20-story building.

Yep. Manic-depression is fun. Good times. So this has been my day. I woke up in the fog, rolled around in crazy, slipped into crazy with tears, and now I'm just confused. I think I'm going to go home, take a sleeping pill, and sleep till tomorrow morning. If I sleep, it'll all go away, right?

Seven deadly sins

"If we can examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand."
- Daily Reflections, July 17.

Every dependence we have. Step four: looking at your character defects in detail and examining their basis in your personality. In the Big Book, they start by giving you the examples of the seven deadly sins. Let's see if I can remember them: pride, lust, sloth, gluttony, anger, and envy. I'm missing one. I think it's something like despair.

We already had a nice discussion about my pride problem, and you can probably tell I have a bit of a lust issue, and some anger problems. I am the sloth at work, out of fear. I am a manic-depressive, so I've got obsessive self-loathing covered, too.

So what about gluttony and envy? Oh, I am envious all the time, but of the little things. I wish I had siblings, I wish I made as much money as Emily, I wish I had a stable family life, I'm envious of people who's parents are still together. Envy, envy, envy. Easy.

And gluttony. Well, hell, I stuff my emotions down with food just like I do with booze, but they are talking about another kind of gluttony. More like the hoarding kind. Keeping your emotions or finances so tied up in yourself that you can't let go and share. I am liberal with money (part of the manic-depressive fun), but I really don't share my emotions. I mean, people know how I feel; I'm not afraid to express them; but people close to me don't know how I REALLY feel. I'm never brave enough to let them all the way in. There's something dark and scary inside me, and I'm afraid people won't want to know. I'm afraid they'll leave if I really share just how crazy and depressed I am all the time.

I just gave a friend this blog link. Don't worry, I'm still going to be brutally honest with myself, but I trust her with my feelings. I trust her to know that she can read and not cry for me (Argentina). She'll still be my friend anyway. Welcome Jennifer.

"Since U Been Gone"

"Since you been gone, I can breathe for the first time. I'm so moving on...."

Thanks Kelly Clarkson for that. It just randomly came up on my iPod between Airborne Toxic Event and Johhny Cash. Random.

I really do feel I can breathe better without alcohol. Not like my lung function is better (it's sure not. That quitting smoking thing didn't take), but I feel like my life is lighter. Like the burden of control has been lifted off of me. All I have to do is follow the simple twelve suggestions of AA and I can be free of the pressure to drink. I can open up my life to the suggestion that there is something out there greater than me, and He (she/it/doorknob) can have the power in my life.

They say more, too, shall be revealed. I look forward to it. Like I've said before, I need to move on. I need to take all this damage and baggage and leave it at the train station. I need to arrive in my new life with less than I came into it with. All of the demons that haunt me can be dealt with now that I'm sober enough to recognize them, and now that I can't shove them back down with self-medication. I have the power to look deep into myself and make changes for the better.

See? I can even get sobriety out of an I hate you pop song.

But tonight I feel heavy. Not like fat heavy, though since I quit drinking I haven't really exercised at all... and I had been so good about running off all those extra calories in booze. Now I should be running off all those extra calories in cookies.

Ok, feeling heavy. Maybe it's the loneliness. Maybe it's the not sleeping (this seems to be like a once a week occurrence now). Maybe it's just being able to feel these feelings that makes me sad. Sad. Huh. Am I sad? What am I sad about? Maybe it's fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of waking up and still being here, in my dark apartment, alone. Not like I don't like being alone, but I know who I want to wake up with, and that makes me lonely knowing I could be with someone and I'm not.

Maybe I need roommates again. Just the sound of other people, the knowing there is someone else in the house. Nah. The people upstairs annoy me enough.

Ramble on, sister

I'm chatty today. I just feel like rambling, so I'll tell another story.

My mom is crazy. No, really. She's got borderline personality disorder, which basically means she can be a manipulative bitch and also a sad, lost little soul. I always took care of her, until I set some boundaries. And when I was little, she always too care of me. Now, we have a better relationship, but it was rocky there for a while. Let's see if I can think of something good.

I used to hide from her. There were spots I would go to when she was being cruel - just fighting with me, or saying mean things. I seem to have blocked out the substance, but I know I the emotions that are supposed to be there.

One day, my dad came home and found my mom just yelling up the stairs in my general direction. Who knows what she was yelling about, but my dad came upstairs to find me. "Anne?" he asked, looking around. I heard his footsteps enter my room and could see his shadow. He sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at the closet. "Anne, come out." "I can't." He giggled and asked why I was hiding in the closet. "I hate her," I replied. "Come on out now," he said, a little louder (not yelling, just trying to get me to come out). He pulled open the door and I was curled into a ball in the far corner, just sitting. "Come on."

My dad always tried to rescue me and reassure me by acting like it was no big deal. He didn't have to spend all day with her, so I know he didn't realize what it was really like to be in her path. So I hid, and he found me. Every time. And every time I was curled up as small as I could be.

Later in life, I dealt with this fear of mom's moods by drinking. Need to get away from mom? Go drink a bottle in the woods. Hide in the hall closet where the booze is. Stay away all night and smoke some weed. Oblivion will help. When you get home she won't say anything, cause you're invisible when your dad is around. She loved him so, I know that. She still does. And he loved her.

I would always try to get in between them when they hugged so I could be a part of it, too. I wanted love, and they freely gave it to each other. My dad hugged me when he got home from work, and read to me every night as a kid. I remember affection from my mom, too, but not well.

I was the invisible kid. I learned to walk in the dark and to not make any noise at all (which helped when I was older and snuck out a lot). I spied a lot on my parents because I knew which steps made noise, and which I could sit on without fear of being seen. I stayed invisible. I tried to go through life that way, but I'm a little outgoing now. But I often feel invisible. I feel like people can't see me, or take me for granted.

I resent the fact that you suck

Sometimes you just can't help but develop resentments. My boss sucks. He's really smart, but he's totally an egotistical jerk. He will put down your work in a passing fashion, and say outright that if he did it it would be better - perfect, even.

So I had a four hour meeting with him this morning and totally developed a resentment. I took a look at it a minute ago, and realized what I was really worried about was my performance in his eyes, and scared that he thought I wasn't doing a good job. Fear. It all seems to come back to fear.

I have therapy tonight, and it's a good night for it. I've got to start making breakthroughs into what I'm really feeling inside. Everything is so blocked off that I can't help but stuff feelings down moments after I feel them. Fear is a scary one! I already lack confidence in myself, and that sure doesn't help.

What do you do about things like that? I know, I know, offer it up. So God, help me to feel better about things like feeling my feelings and not taking personally other people's opinions, even my boss' feelings about my work.