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The weekends always come at me like a mac truck barreling down the highway at night after the brakes had gone out. Somehow, I see it coming but am never fully prepared for the actual force of impact.

The cause of this weekend’s derailment was gastroenteritis , aka stomach flu.

It plowed into me from out of nowhere on Friday morning only to quickly move on to attack little Bean come Friday night where it lingered for the next 13 hours causing yet another period of time with zero sleep.

The upside of being down and out is it leaves you with a great deal of time to just think.

It’s no secret that this year has been, let’s say, challenging at the least. The secret lies within how these particular “challenges” have affected me both emotionally and physically. I’ve taken every pit fall, every rough patch, and every emotion brought forth and internalized them to the point of insanity. They have been allowed to fester within myself causing a toxic mixture of depression and anger to boil just below the surface.

Pessimisim has become my souls only nourishment, feeding the depression like a steriod.

Mind over matter.
I believe in this concept so strongly within every aspect of life and physical/mental/emotional health and always have. This time my mind hasn’t been strong enough to overcome the matter. I’ve tried to convince myself it was. I’ve ignored the underlying toxins that broiled so heavily within and pretended that things were normal. Yet, the more I pretended on the outside, the worse things have gotten on the inside, deteriorating rapidly and daily.

I know I’m not crazy. Crazy people do not sit around asking themselves “Am I crazy?”.  I know what I want to be. I know how I used to be. I know I want that me back. I’ve not known how to go about that, mostly because I’d been trying to convince myself that everthing is fine and there isn’t really anything wrong to begin with. I’ve been so stubborn that I’d conditioned my own brain to believe that fool heartedly. Things couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Even during small moments of self realization and even smaller doses of admittances, I never really believed how bad it has gotten. I refused to see the full truth, apparently thinking that taking it in smaller doses was easier on my ego, therefore easier to deal with. In all actuality, I was making things harder on myself, hiding further within a curtain of false confidences in order to push the pain further and further below the surface and give off the appearances of normality. All an intricate facad that my delicate ego conjured up in order to protect the hurt and scared child within.

In the midst of this toxic deterioration of self, and in the name of saving face, I’ve pulled myself further and further into the world of technology and further away from the real world. I’ve sought solace in faceless strangers and type written word. It’s easier to project normalicy within the cold world of technology. Better yet, it’s easier to convince those around me that things are just “fine” in this forum. If one can see into my eyes, they would immediately know the lie that I was passing off as truth and then force the questions I don’t want to answer. In essence, I have been hiding behind my computer screen.

I am a woman who needs human contact in order to survive and thrive in this world. I have always had a lot of friends, been full of laughter in order to make those around me laugh. Hearing the laughter of those that I care about has always acted as a healing agent for me. It takes two to laugh whole heartedly. Lately, there hasn’t been much laughter. Since I can’t find the laughter within myself, it’s just easier to type out LOL and have those think you’re in good spirits than it is to pretend laughter in real life and pass it off as real.

The only problem with this concept is that I am depriving myself of the very things that I need in order to dig myself out of this “funk” that I’ve found myself deeply embedded within. I’ve taken out the very important element of support, love, and hope that I need simply because I don’t believe myself to be worth being around. I’ve taken away their ability to make up their own mind about whether I am worthy of their time or not. I’ve shut myself off from the world.

The anxiety attacks that occure at the mere thought of venturing out into the world haven’t helped. The feelings of despair have fed those attacks leaving me virtually defenseless and weak. It has been easier for me to continue to allow them to keep me a prisoner in my own home rather than to fight through them and continue on doing the things that I love to do. I then get angry with myself for allowing this kind of weakness to take over. I tell myself that I truly must be a worthless human because I’ve not been strong enough to over come these feelings. I am causing my own wicked cycle. I am causing my own road blocks and darkness within. I am truly my own worst enemy.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been doing a great deal of serious thinking. Peeling away the layers all the way back to the beginning of this spiral into hell. I know what the beginning event was. Catastrophic and world altering as it was, it was simply the beginning. I allowed it to change the very person that I am, causing things to just get worse and worse. Other events and changes within my life then became overwhelming. Things that would normally just be the regular flow of things became huge mountains that I haven’t been able to see any way around. Like quick sand, I’ve allowed things to bury me quickly and without too much of a fight.

It’s no secret that I have always had a tendancy towards depression. It sneaks up on me from time to time and it has my whole life. I know that a major factor in my coming out of it, usually rather quickly and unscathed, is the anchor of home. Having my feet firmly planted within the roots of home is a must for my personal emotional, mental, and spiritual health. It dawned on me over the weekend that is the very thing that has been missing from my life for quite some time. Yes, the depression that began at the beginning of this year was inevitable. However, the continuance thereof has been assisted by the fact that I’ve not truly had a home to plant my roots within in order to remain grounded.

The sale of this house has really left me floating in a dark and desolate space. I have been living in limbo with no real place to plant my feet for that much needed stability for some time now. This “home” that I am living in is blank. It is void of personality. It is void of the warmth of home and hearth. Sure, it is full of my family, the people that make up my life, and yet it is empty all at the same time. It has no feeling of home. It has no feeling of safety and solidity. It is as though we’ve been living in a cold hotel suite all this time. That is not helping my emotional state of mind at all. I realize that and therefor accept that, now.

I have been a woman in limbo for much too long. My airy and carefree spirit needs something to keep myself grounded, and for me, that has always been my home. In a manner of speaking, I have been homeless as of late, leaving me without that much needed grounding. This is just one aspect of the bigger picture and one that I know will change soon. In the mean time, I’ve been focusing on the other aspects that have affected me so deeply. Things that are not of the material world but simply live within my own mind. While waiting to move into and settle into my “new” home, I’ll be working on the rest of those issues.

One of which is reconnecting with the world around me and disconnecting from the computer. That is not to say that I won’t be a computer junkie still, just not dependant upon the computer to remind me that I am alive and that I have friends and a life. It had crossed my mind to shut down my blogs all together, but I cannot feasably do so. Writing is the one way that I can release the emotions that find themselves clouding my mind. Writing is my outlet and it always has been. Just because I don’t keep a paper journal any longer doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t write. I just need to put it all into perspective and prioritize myself better.

I will still visit all of you. I’ve grown quite close to a good many wonderful folks via the blogsphere, and I hate to sever any of those ties. However, I won’t be around so often. I won’t post daily out of fear that I am letting somebody down if I don’t. I am sure that some have noticed my absense as of late already. I need to focus on myself. I need to focus more on my family. I need to remember how to live in the real world and regain that person that I was a year ago.

I am not going shut either blog down. The other blog and it’s accompanying forum will remain up, just ignored by me for a while. I feel badlly about that, but I cannot allow myself to feel too badly about it right now. One of these days I will be strong enough within my real life to contribute meaningfully to my written life and those whom enjoy reading it. One cannot write good material unless they are living a real life.

I am going to be relying on the good old fashioned telephone rather than communicating via email only. There is something to be said for the sound of a warm voice on the other end, hearing the actual laughter rather than reading it, and the human connection that comes from both. I am going to focus on myself and my family so that when I do get moved into my new home, I will have the strength to focus on the other things in my life that I’ve had to give up as of late such as gardening, crafting, cooking, and putting on dinner parties for friends and family.

I feel much like a snake preparing to shed it’s skin. It’s time to renew, refresh, and emerge back into life with a new sense of self. Just as that snake preparing to shed does, I will spend my time before the actual shedding process simply conserving energy and preparing myself for the renewal process. By the time I shed this ashen layer, I will be prepared for the whirlwind of energy and living life to its fullest that shall follow.

I just cannot be a good wife, mother, daughter, sister, neice, aunt or friend until I am a better me.

It’s far beyond time for me to take care of me. I have to let go of taking care of everyone else. I have to move beyond the deeply embedded need to care for everyone else. I can’t expect anyone to care about me until I care about me first. I will never find myself within others. There isn’t a single soul on this earth that can make me happy. Only I can do that. I simply cannot contribute constructively to my writting, or to my life until I repair the fraying ends that I have allowed to damage my life so badly.

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