About Me

Living life one dream at a time.

Words of the Wise

"What after all is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean."
-Christopher Fry, The Lady's not for Burning

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, 'I'll try again tomorrow.'"
-Mary Anne Radmacher

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."
-Erica Jong

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the World. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel unsure around you...We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us; It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-Nelson Mandella, 1994 Inaugural Speech

"Until this moment I had believed forgiveness to be a special virtue, a beneficence God expected of good people. But it wasn't that at all. Forgiveness was an instinct, a desperate impulse to stay connected to the people you needed, no matter what their betrayals."
-Monica Wood, My Only Story

"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days."
-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried when you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for the want of a teller but for the want of an understanding ear."
-Stephen King

"Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should just be friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."
-Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Kindly Ones

"Being always overavid, I demand from those I love a love equal to mine which, being balanced people, they cannot supply."
-Sylvia Ashton-Warner

"What I need is someone who will make me do what I can."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson


"You know, when you crawl that far down into the abyss, you really shouldn't bring stuff back up with you. Some things are meant to live in the dark. Your blog is like one of those fish with no eyes. Only slightly more disturbing."
Saturday, January 1, 2011

And so it goes.

10:24 PM | Posted by Christine | Edit Post
I'm not terribly proud of my behavior lately. It's as if everything has just been too hard, and I haven't been able to keep my head up. I've spent the last week in my apartment, hiding from the world. I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to go anywhere. I just...don't want to engage.

Generally speaking, if you give me a crisis, I can deal with it. Anything you want to throw at me. I'm up to the challenge. I'll take charge, find a way to get everyone through it, and do it with a determination that borders on fanatical.

One challenge. I'm golden.

But when there are multiple fronts on which I need to fight, I break down. I can't focus. I bleed energy like a gunshot victim. I start to close in on myself, and withdraw from everything. Instead of fighting the good fight, I collapse into a quivering mess.

The gnawing worry for over a year has been trying to sell my house. There is nothing I can do to make it move, and so I have tried not to let it bother me. It's there, though. Every time I walk into this apartment, every time Alec and I go to sleep in the same bedroom, every time I make a second monthly payment, every time I look for something and remember that it's packed in a box out in Cary, it's there. I stomp it down. I tell it to be quiet. I tell it that I will win eventually.

Then came the cyst. At first, it didn't seem like such a big deal...have surgery, get it removed. But every day it grows, and every day it pushes against parts of my insides that aren't used to being pushed. It hurts when I sit, it hurts when I stand. It hurts when I lay on my back. It hurts when....well, it always hurts. I have not had a day without pain in almost a month. This is harder to ignore than the housing issue, because it's always screaming for attention. I swear I have tried to ignore it. But it scares me. I'm afraid that surgery will not be as easy as I hope. I'm afraid that maybe there's something else going on that I don't know about that is causing all of the pain. Again, there is nothing I can do but wait. And try not to be afraid.

I am burned out at work. This I can deal with, because it's such a necessary evil. But it doesn't bring the challenge it used to. It's not something that I can say, "Well, at least I have a great job!" It's just a dull ache.

All of this was enough. I was managing. I was hanging in there, and doing okay as long as I reminded myself to be happy with all of the anticipated fruits of the last few years' labor. I was hanging in there.

And then I was slowly, messily dumped. I hadn't really realized how much I'd been relying on this man's smile to get me through. He was safe. He was constant. He made me happy every time we were together. It had been so long since I'd let my guard down and just enjoyed someone's company that I failed to see the danger that lay within. And all of a sudden, without warning, he panicked. Out of nowhere came, "I don't know what I want." That gradually turned into, "I need some time". Then came the death knell of, "you deserve better".

And again, there is nothing I can do about it.

Throw in the agony of Christmas, Alec being gone to his dad's for a week and a half, and then compound it with the stomach flu.

I am worthless right now. I don't know where to turn. I can't think.

I'm not answering the phone. I'm not going out. I've cried every day.

It hurts to breathe.

I wish someone could come in and make it all better, but I know how foolish of a wish that really is.

Things will get better. Until then, though, I just want to cry a little more.


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