CRRAAACCCCKKKKK! {That's the Sound of My Sangfroid Giving Up the Ghost Finally ...}

I took a long, long walk down a dark, eerie lane a few years ago, metaphorically, and I'm SO damn clueless about myself and my feelings that I've just now caught on to the fact that people who go through what I've been through the last 7 years crack up and fall apart. DUH.

I'm no exception, although I've working really hard at convincing myself that I was ... and the heart of the matter is, to quote a character from my favorite Hitchcock-style movies, 'I hate - hate! - getting f___ing emotional'.

Heifer with a big stick

One of my oldest and most reliable friends smacked me over the head with a 2x4, figuratively, a couple of weeks ago: she asked me if I knew that I had been having a nervous breakdown since the year before I left NY. (That's not how she said it, exactly, but it's how I heard it ...) 

Thus, in one second, the pits of hell I thought I'd been avoiding revealed themselves - I've been swimming in them, wallowing like a damned walrus in hellfire and telling myself it was ice water, like nothing was nothing.

Stupid. Abso-frigging-lutely S.T.U.P.I.D.

Some years ago, in the last few months of 2004, hell first opened up on me raining down fire and brimstone, then a whole new set of disasters came the next year and the year after that. Many, many things - things I have never had to deal with before - things I never THOUGHT I'd ever have to deal with. Things that I didn't know - don't know - how to deal with. So, I didn't/haven't.

And good God, from the most straight-forward, plain-spoken person I've ever known, comes the bald, un-prettied up truth, and she asks the question I haven't wanted to answer, making me face the answer I've always known. How funny-ironic.THAT'S when I understood what my doctor's been telling me - heard all the things I didn't want to hear. I could admit it finally, that I wasn't made of cast iron, or stone, that I wasn't coping, and then ... my eyes opened.

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I'm not going into detail - I have tried sharing a bit of what I was going through, a little bit of what happened to me, with a few friends - my two oldest bffs (LWR & KBSM) have been my mainstays - the other ones I talked to ran off like scalded dogs, and I cut off the rest.The ones that ran made it worse for me, because I've always listened to all their troubles and been as supportive as I could whenever I could ... I've stopped talking at all - stopped trying. I'm whining here again - time to stop.

{SIGH} I'm trying to understand, y'all. Maybe someday, I will. But today, and yesterday, and the day before, and all the days before the day before, I'm just hurt, so much so that I've cut off contact with everyone.

Dumb thing to do to punish the rest for what a few have done, I know, but I've been so tuned out and messed up for so long I am not sure I know how to talk to anyone, anymore. The mask I've been wearing is so good, and I've been faking it SO much the last few years ("I'm FINE!! Don't you think I'm fine?"), I'm not sure what's real and what's an act myself anymore.

On top of that, I've been out of work since 2009, and that has nearly done for me. Not because of the economic hardship, but because of how I feel about work. It's like my arms and legs have been cut off.

Ah well. Nature of the world today.

I wish I could explain to my friends why I haven't even been around, but I don't know where to start, and many of them won't talk to me anymore. Thing is, I'm not sure I blame them.  I've been angry, I've been grief-stricken, I've felt mean, I've wanted to be cruel, I've felt depressed to the point of abject despair - all that, and I'm not in the habit of sharing, not anymore.

I haven't known what to do. I couldn't calculate or engineer a way out, and positive thinking didn't cut it - it's like wishing for ice water in hell.

NOT. HAPPENING.

I've been in pain, and my animal nature took over - I crawled off into a hole and tried to die. Well ... seems my will to live is much stronger than my battered psyche. So, I'm working out what to do next.

Peace be with you. In the meantime, I'm working on finding mine, again.

Laters.