Last night, I was talking to one of my best friends (whom some of you might remember as guest blogger heatherbat). Heather has been one of my best friends since we were in high school, and, being willing to make the continued effort to be my friend, knows me better than just about anyone else on this planet. As such, I was opining over the horrible traps that the mind weaves. I have one that pretty much sticks me in increasing isolation, and even talking about it textually makes me tear up. Relating the conversation to my husband (who, being one of my best friends, hears all the crap I blather at my other best friends), I pretty much started immediately crying. I’m not a self-pitying, woe is me sort, but damn, this particular mental trap is so nasty that I’ve been trying to pick it apart for the better part of a decade. It didn’t used to be so bad, but then? I used to have booze and smokes and drugs to help me ignore self-preservation and attempt to escape from my own cage.

While I am in no condition to write about it specifically right now, I am hoping I can try to this weekend. Between then and now is no good, as I am still down from talking about it yesterday. There’s also the fact that, being at work, I don’t have a hiding place. Heck, I barely have one at home, but it’s exposing such a weaksauce mental drama vulnerability that, many times in the past, has been shrugged off and ignored, I need to have an escape route to a ‘safe’ place where I can be alone. And, if I do manage to speak of it, it is my hopes that people will understand it for future relations not only with me, but to take on board as an understanding of how damned hard it is for those of us with mental conditions to fight free to cling onto precious moments of sanity and stability.

Obviously, I know I’m not the only one labouring under such traps. I presume that it’s fairly common amongst my friends, if not my more ‘normal’ ones. Hence my reticence in speaking openly of it; my attempts to relay it to trusted friends in the past has been met with bafflement and, in some cases, offense. I am aware that it might sound like a ridiculous, and even diva-esque, set of conditions and standards, but that’s the thing – I know. Makes it worse, frankly – if I could beat my brain into submission, it wouldn’t work like that. It would work smoothly, reasonably, and not immediately freak out and do something irrational. It’s like playing a game of ‘Quit hitting yourself!’, wherein you’re hitting yourself and you cannot stop – no fun, no fun.

Anyways, as said – I won’t worry about it for today. The mind needs rest after waging epic war, especially when that’s what it gets to look forward to as a reward for… well… doing the same thing. So it goes, so it goes.

<3