And down go the pieces, all over again

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I haven't been here in a long while. I feel sort of guilty for that - for the reasoning behind it and the reason I'm returning. I wasn't here because.. things were going pretty well. Because I use this as a support forum more than anything else, and when I don't need it, it feels like... obsessing over my condition to be here.

It's nice to have people there who understand... but at the same time I don't want to shut out the rest of the world and embrace this thing we share in common, you know? There are just so few of us. I will be lonely.

I'm sorry. Thank you for holding me when I was sad, WrongPlanet. Will you hold me again? Will you be the confessional I need so f*****g badly?



I seem to have developed an extremely maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with extreme stress, and that is, apparently, to shut off the higher brain functions entirely so I simply CAN'T be stressed. Obviously I can push through, to an extent; I have to be, you know, just to write this. But it's hard. My brain is all over the place and I can't catch it. Much of what I write and say resembles the disjointed ramblings that are the hallmark of schizophrenia. I... am not schizophrenic. A schizophrenic cannot snap herself out of it, surely? Even to the limited state that I can?

I left home to travel to my sister's wedding on Thursday. I should have gone to a chemistry lab the wednesday before since I knew I wouldn't be there for my normal lab on Friday, but I either forgot or simply didn't want to enough that I 'forgot' of my own volition. I didn't have the lab report from the last lab that was due, and though I don't remember worrying about that at the time, it saved me from having to admit it.

On saturday, I was supposed to give a presentation with a group for Psychology. They emailed me frantically all wednesday, thursday, friday. I knew I wasn't going to be there. I knew, but I had no excuse to give. So I gave none. I hid away, and I watched Saturday go by while wearing a frilly dress. Handling being the maid of honor while sick as a dog was stress enough, surely? Why should I think about school when I my sister was getting married, right at my side? ....I assume they did the job without me. I have never, NEVER been that person who makes everyone hate group work.

When we got home Sunday afternoon my cat was gone. The person who was supposed to be caring for him (and all my animals), who I cried to my mother repeatedly that I didn't trust.... proved herself untrustworthy. She was arrested. Her daughter 'cared' for our animals in her place, and my inside cat managed to get out. I don't know how long he's been gone. The daughter says she saw him sometime Saturday, but I don't particularly trust anything she says considering I've worked with her before and know her to be a liar and a thief (if I'd known she was the woman we'd left in charge's daughter, I would have put up a much greater fight about the arrangement). So... my cat is.. gone, for all I know now. Fliers are up. Searched and searched. He has a collar, but who could possibly catch such a nervous cat to read it? The shelter is finally open tomorrow- we get to check for him there then. I... love that cat. Obsessively even. I love him so much more than I've ever loved a person. We both fear the rest of the world, but not each other. Never each other. We took solace in each other...

Monday came and now has nearly gone, along with my chemistry midterm. Emails from my chemistry professor fill my inbox, panicking. I don't know what to say. I can't even force myself to think about it, most of the time. I'm stumbling around in a haze. I'm acting like a child. I'm acting... I...

Hysterical regression, I think. Hysterical delusion and hallucination. Cataplexy, unresponsive all day... I can't get a coherent sentence out of my mouth, and yet here I am typing to you now. Hysterical... it's all but synonymous with 'faking it' in the medical world.

I don't know what to do. I don't know how to deal with it. Any of it.

I want my cat back. I want to... not be failing everything because of... laziness? Not laziness. Fear. Fear that looks like laziness and thus makes me look even more afraid.



I learned how to not be afraid, WrongPlanet. All you have to do is lock everything deep inside and never go there again. But it makes so many more scary things there for you to deal with....

I'm locking back up again. Being happy despite it all. Because I can't handle this. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to DO. How do you fix something like what I've done when you ran to the counselor with your tail between your legs to fix LAST SEMESTER, where you pulled almost the exact same s**t?

Why does nobody get that shaking me or smacking me upside the head and telling me to "just do it" is just one more scary thing to run away from?


I don't know. I don't know.. what to do.. about this. I...


I just want someone to hold me and tell me it will all be okay. And I feel guilty - or, I think, shameful, for it's not that I feel I shouldn't say it but that I'll be rebuked for doing so - about that, because I don't feel like I deserve it, you know? I've had plenty of chance to do all of the things I haven't done that are so torturing me right now. I'm sure there's some easy solution I could think of right now that I could think of if I just "put the effort" into thinking about it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll apologize a million times.... but I can't seem to stop doing this over and over again. It hurts me, too, so believe me, I know why you're saying what you're saying. I would say the same thing to someone in my situation. I think I HAVE. And it's even what I believe, if I'm completely honest with myself - that I just have to somehow get over this and force myself to do what I haven't done.

SHEER WILLPOWER, ACTIVATE!





.....I can summon energy, yes, but it doesn't fix that I have no idea where to direct it anymore. And it doesn't fix that I should be done with this -- that someone should learn from their mistakes instead of making them over and over again.



...I don't know what to do...

my god.
this is pretty much sounding like a carbon copy of my life right now.
i wish i could help you...
*hugs*

Thank you. You don't know how much it means to me.

I'm just so, so, so afraid of letting go of this strategy that has help me come so far. I was the MAID OF HONOR in a wedding, for christ's sake! Do you know the pile of nerves I would have been only a year ago? If I'd never learned how I could just.. decide not to be anxious anymore?

I know it's not a good idea to just ignore my responsibilities and be playful and content in spite of everything. But it's the only happiness I've ever found. I'm like.. I'm like the rats in a lab that starve to death, just pushing that little button that triggers an electrical impulse in that perfect spot in their brain. I'm like a coke addict feeding her cravings instead of her children. I've found the happy part of my brain, and all I want to do is just sit there all day and not worry about the fact that it's Not Okay to be there.

I don't remember ever feeling this guilty all the time.

If I can't snip that final strand, if I can't escape into my rainbow world of video games and pretty music and never think about what I left behind again... which would look pathetic on the outside, yes, but who the hell cares about the OUTSIDE after that point....

I need a way to to control which worries get cast aside. Logic has no place when they all make my heart thud so rapidly; of COURSE I'm going to run away. I hate that. I fancy myself a logical person compared to most people, and yet here I am letting everything fall apart for an emotional reason.

Do I have to let it go? 'Kick the habit' ?

Just the thought is terrifying in ways I can't seem to describe. I keep trying and what I type is just rambling nonsense. Long story short: self control, for me, WITHOUT this mechanism I've developed... feels like attempting to manhandle a feral cat. I'm both the human, covered in scratches, exhausted and annoyed, and the cat -- wanting nothing more than bolt away, to find a small hole to hide in and never come out. .....hell, even with that mechanism. My cat is hiding in the false contentedness I created. Or was. Right now the fear's too great for him to be content even in his hole, but he'll be damned if he's coming OUT of it if the world is that scary from a distance.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Why hasn't it occurred to me before? Certainly not validated empirically, but it's still worth considering as considering nothing now that I've opened Pandora's box and can't seem to wrestle it closed. (f**k f**k f**k.)

I want to sleep but I can't. So I'm going to... to use you guys as a diary, basically? I'm terribly sorry about that. Using an actual diary just feels so risky, and so silly at that. I just can't.. I can't make myself do it. And besides.. even if my horrid walls of text are far too much for anyone to want to read and really have no place being shoved in the face of complete strangers, there's still a CHANCE... a small chance that I'll actually get useful feedback, and feel better. That doesn't happen with a diary. So.. forgive me.





Is my continuous failure a result of trying to leap over the missing social hurdle and instead climb the perilous peaks above? Is my fall inevitable because of this? But... I don't like people very much. It's not just fear; I don't terribly enjoy them even when I'm calm around them. Is it really, truly necessary I wonder? A biological part of me, as real as anything physical? Inescapable?

Can't I just fill it with animals? They are the positives of social interaction without the negatives. I love my cat. I wish he was here. f**k, I hope he's okay... I...


I can't finish this now.

Funny. My happy place isn't happy at all anymore, and I still can't force myself to

Wow. Sounds like you need a break. I hope your cat's ok too.
I can remember thinking, All I want is one week off. One week to sleep.

Oh, and congratulations on being a part of your sister's wedding.

Thank you. Very, very much.

He came back. Crying, thin, and appearing to have nightmares all night while I lie beside him, but he's back. So there's one huge, massive stress on my shoulders. But wow! The Pandora's Box that was opened that I didn't even realize I was hiding..!

It does very much feel like there are two different people in here, like I wrote earlier - the human and the feral cat. Because I'm looking at everything I wrote... lord. It really seems like someone else. Like someone I've been neglecting in an attempt to reign her in, and she has so much more to say than I ever realized... I feel more in control than that person. So that... that would be the cat, I think. And now the human is writing.

I never thought I'd make a comparison that so agreed with Freud.


So. Wow. Lot I've got on my plate to deal with. Woo. A break... hm. This pattern has repeated itself for quite some time now. I think... maybe putting the effort towards intensive therapy instead? To learn new coping mechanisms? To find away to deal with the cat, the horse, the Id, the whatever you want to call it, that's not just muzzling her and telling her I know better? Because obviously she escapes that. Over. And over. And over.

I get it. I have it. A eureka moment all of my own.

I understand everything.

Calm. Breathe child you are fine. No judgements here. We are here with you.