Sometimes it gets like this...

I am not having the best day. But I would be hard-pressed to say exactly why. I suspect part of it has to do with a feeling of anger that I think is bubbling up to the surface.

What am I angry about?

I could list any number of reasons: I am angry that the doctors want me to get more scans, without giving me much of an explanation or having much of a conversation. I am angry that I don't know what questions to ask to support myself. I am angry that I am in this position. Did I do something emotionally, physically, past life-wise to bring myself here? Am I angry at myself? Am I angry at those who I listened to over the years over myself? Am I angry at those who taught me at a very young age to question and doubt myself?

My guess is the answer to many of these questions is YES.

So what do I do with it?

When I get like this I feel very disabled. I feel numb. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like the nearest cave is no where to be found. I feel like I just want to run - but where? And, yet, I was doing so well. Where did this come from?

I was doing well as long as I didn't have to interact with the reality of my life. The reality of my life overwhelms. The reality of my life is a pain in my back that doesn't seem to want to go away. The reality of my life is that I have so much difficulty moving at times. The reality of my life is that I have physical concerns that I don't know how to resolve. The reality of my life is that I don't have the ability financially to just go out and do what I want to do to take care of myself. The reality is that trying to do things to take care of myself and taking care of myself seem to be at odds at times.

Some wonderful things have happened lately. Some wonderful people have poked their heads out. I am seeing light where there didn't seem to be any. In the moment that those things occurred, it was a great, bright, beautiful sun. In the distance, and among the muck, it is like the tiniest star in the sky.

So many things cross into my world. Too much. Hard to know what "the" answers are. I am struggling to make sense of anything. I am struggling to do what I should have been doing all along in my life: make choices from a place that comes from within, and is removed from fear.

I hate the word "should." I really do. It makes me feel like I in some way failed myself. I should have somehow have known better. How I would have known better, I don't exactly know. But I should have. At least that is what a part of me says. Another part knows better than that. It knows that as a child I couldn't have possibly done better than I did. As it was, I was doing things I shouldn't have done. But then that part questions the older me. Why didn't SHE know better?  And I know that she was only doing the best she could, too, barely having any adult guidance in her life in her teens and early 20s. There were teachers and counselors, but it was not the same as family. The teachers and counselors were only temporary posts along the way, not the same thing as having a supportive family unit. I was living life, in some ways, superficially. No one really wanted to know how I really felt. I wasn't supposed to feel that way. On the surface I had to seem like I had it all together, all figured out. As a child I even told my grandmother that I would take care of her when I got older. She seemed amused. She also died before that ever was even a remote possibility.

A part of me knows that this concoction has way too many ingredients. A part of me knows that it becomes all too easy to throw everything into the mix after a time. There are lots of parts to me that know lots of things, and even a part that tries to tell me that I am OK, and that everything will be alright.

Which part do I listen to?

A part of me feels like the bubbles are important. They even feel like they may relate to my back. They feel important. It occurs to me that I can feel emotional and still feel like everything is going to be OK. It doesn't have to be one to the exclusion of the other.

I have been thinking about the conversation of "looking sick" that I had in one of my blog entries. I do as much as I can sometimes to look like anything but sick. There are so many reasons for it. But then, if you don't look sick, sound sick, act sick, then many don't think you ARE sick. I was trained well. I understand why I used to be that way. It makes perfect sense. A part of me thinks I should go back to the old way. Maybe I would get some help and attention then. The irony is that I don't think being that way really helped, either. It just made me feel like less of a fraud. After all, if I didn't seem sick, what right did I have to take off from work, or do something else for me?

It seems I have spent a good part of my life being conditioned to live a certain way and be a certain way, and I am tired of it. I see things in a way I never really have - and it DOES make me angry. It makes me angry that I didn't get to be who I was. Is there blame in there? I don't know. I suppose there could be. But I am not really sure there is - which is a bit surprising, really.

I spent much of my childhood wishing I had a different life, a different family. I often was like, "why me?" "why can't I have a family like other kids do?" "why don't we have any money?" "why don't I have parents like others do?" "why couldn't I have had other parents?" WHY...?

While I still don't understand things like this completely, I do have a different understanding than when I did when I was a kid. I understand that a lot of who I am and how I am has everything to do with the recipe that is me. I understand that it can be really helpful to some, and has made me who I am today, and in many ways that is a good thing.

But there are still things that suck. There are still things I don't understand. There are still frustrations. Upsets. Times when I don't know which way to go. Times that I have to make impossible decisions and times I have to make impossible decisions when I wouldn't have wanted that decision to make in the first place. Times like the muck that is this blog entry.

It is like a cloud descends and nothing else matters.

If I was going to guess, I would say this happens when I see the impossibilities around me. It happens the times when I find my face planted in a wall more than a time or two in a relatively short period of time.

Some days it really is hard to LIVE life because it feels like I am too busy trying to survive it. Is this somehow all a part of the package? It certainly wasn't one that I consciously would have ordered. Too bad I don't have a way to return it - because I would want to, if I could. It seems that I am "stuck" with it, though, so I can only hope that there is more to unpack that leaves me feeling better about everything at some point. Even if i can't change it, I'd take a decoder ring. Some perspective would be good. It is what has made sense of much of the mess that my life seems to have been. Although at the time it often felt as devastating as it sometimes does even now.

I have to believe that I'll get through this in the same way I got through those things. The problem I have now, though, is that I was never up against something so well known for being a life-snuffer. The other things may have made it feel like the end of the world. This situation could make it so.

Funny, isn't it, how one day I can be talking so powerfully and so calmly and then the next, *POOF.* It's like another person. So much of my life has been like this. Too much, probably. Since I discovered that I am empathic (can pick up on other people's feelings) I have wondered how much of the see-saw is other people's stuff. The odds of it being someone else's are good - especially when it comes out of no where.

As I am writing, it occurs to me that being in this apartment isn't necessarily a good thing. There are neighbors everywhere. Above, below, to 3 sides. Hmm. As I think about this, I feel something of the fog lifting. Even though I try to be aware of this, it often is not the first place I go when I feel like this - even though it probably should be. I wonder how my neighbors are doing.

I have spent a good part of my life away from others.  As a kid it took a lot to get me out of the house. I think I am just now realizing why. Being around a lot of people is difficult for me. I don't like doing it for long periods of time. When I was in the hospital I pulled in, too. That helped them to label me "depressed."

So often I like one-on-one interactions, and smaller groups. I imagine all of what I am telling you is why. It's not that I am unfriendly or anti-social or depressed or anything else "negative." It's probably just a part of me that knows I am better off in my cocoon than being around a number of people and picking up their emotions.

As I think about it, I was at the grocery store the other night, and there were more people there than usual. I felt really scattered and disjointed. Hmm.

It's like pieces of a puzzle. I don't know what to do with them all. I know there are pieces that have everything to do with me and what I am dealing with, but I don't think I can discount the other parts.

So much fun being me.

I do have to say after writing this I feel incredibly better, even though there is a dang loud motor making noise outside at the moment that is unnerving. I can only hope it will stop soon. Maybe I'll just have to play some music loudly to try to overcome it. Funny thing about that these days, too. I love music, but do not "casually" listen to it much any more. It's almost like I like the silence within my head better. Hard to hear yourself and your thoughts when there are the thoughts and waves of others coming in. Plus it seems to be really hard for me to do two things at once much any more.

Onward.

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