Well, it’s been almost a year.  I’m still around.  🙂  I broke my back coming off a friend’s horse in March, and was laid up — well, not laid up for long,  just slowed down — for a while. (Not the horse’s fault – it was a freak thing.) I’m healed up, and needing to write again.  Perhaps it’s the dark.

I wrote for a while last night, and I’ll share some of it here.  When emotions are high and I’m trying hard to cope, I allow myself to skip the English teacher rules and just get things down on paper.

i am scared. sometimes i get scared and i don’t know why and it is like deep, dark dread is creeping into me.  i know it can be triggers of which i am not aware, but that doesn’t really help much in the moment. i am safe and dry, in my house, with my animals, and yet i feel as if something terrifying is about to happen.  it feels like this happens all the time, though i know it doesn’t.  i think.  i want to cheer up, put on music, take a shower, do something that would help, but everything seems like too much.  i don’t want to move from this chair.  i don’t want to breathe much or make even the noise that my typing makes.  you know shows where a terrified person is hiding in the closet, watching the killer getting closer and closer?  like that.  i fear i am exaggerating, but i don’t think i am.  

there is fire in the stove.  there is laundry on the rack.  i see dogs sleeping and sister asleep on the blue chair nearby.  there is water in my jar.  i have grading to do, i wanted to do, and now i can’t think.  the fan came on for the stove.  juno stood up because someone is coming home.  i am struggley and don’t want to talk.  i tried a friend to see if i could come over for a bit or talk, but she is out of town and at work and can’t talk.

then i am afraid i am lying. my housemate came home – she had finished her last final at western.  she is done with school. i offered to feed her dinner as celebration, and got that done and ate with her and managed to be kinda cheery.  then i ran a quick errand to the store.  i said thank you to the clerk.  i think i was still scared during that but now i don’t know.  i wish i could know what was true.

Trusting my thoughts and emotions is a regular battle. I lived for a long time being accused of faking things, and both the voice and the doubt haunt me still.  It is often difficult for me to know what to believe about what I am thinking.  I’m not sure how to explain. Perhaps it is something like living with hallucinations — though I’ve not had to deal with that. There’s an awareness that some things are real and valid, and others are not, but distinguishing them is often impossible. I don’t know if I am stepping onto a frozen lake or a piece of asphalt.  Will I fall through? Will I just walk down the street? Do I need to fear that step and not take it? I don’t know. I end up doubting myself often and feeling like a fraud.

There is more to say, but work will come early tomorrow, and I will be there. I need to lie down in the night.