Beyond the Mask You See

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: despite how intelligent I am, my brain is a freaking idiot. Why, you may ask? Well because it likes to take a negative thought and blow it up into monstrous proportions. It also likes to say that potentially dabgerous things are perfectly ok and that nothing bad will come from it. It's like the wires in my head that control the self preservation and the ability to know reality from fiction became some jumbled mess and now everything is discombobulated:  So I walk around on edge, never fully knowing what to believe. I'm paranoid that not only is this obvious to everyone, but that they are all discussing it behind my back. Logically, I am quite sure I one cares enough about me and my depressing life to say two words, or if they do it is mentioned in passing.  I have no idea who I can trust.  So I keep my thoughts to myself until I can get home and write them anonymousl. Today, the thoughts played o...

So some people believe there are stages to the grieving process and that each happens in a specific order, but once you reach the last stage then you are ready to move on with your life. I know from experience that this is complete bullshit. There is no straight line when you are grieving a loss. Each day is different and brings with it a different emotion. Which is unfortunate for me because I have trouble expressing or even admitting certain emotions even exist. Now, for most people in my life, the mask I keep on is flawless. They wouldn't know something was wrong unless I told them. Some people are far more intuitive than I would like and see right through the mask. Over the last few weeks, I've run a gauntlet of emotions that have left me feeling raw and on the edge of panic most of the time because I just don't know how to deal with what I'm feeling. I've felt a profound sadness because a chapter of my life has come to an end and not under the best circ...

There are days, like today, when the demons in my head are louder, so loud I can't think straight. So loud and demanding that my heart pounds in my chest, my hands shake, my stomach is in knots and I spend my entire day racing to the bathroom because panic attacks also apparently make you need to evacuate your bowels immediately. Those days, it's almost impossible to play the game. I fight the physical urge to simply walk out of the office or where ever I happen to be, get in my car and drive until I can't anymore. Those days, every mistake becomes an apocolypse, every negative remark feels like an attack. On those days, I want to run to the last safe thing I knew, the only safe place I have. But I can't. Because to the world I have it all together. I am calm, confident, assertive- a force to be reckoned with. I am in command. The first time I watched Frozen and saw Elsa, I though "this is me... not the awesome ice powers, but the anxiety and fear, th...

The last few days in, my head hadn't been the best place to be. All those thoughts stinging my brain, angry wasps demanding my attention. The medicines only keep some of the wasps away. So I have been writing those thoughts down here. Sharing with strangers the things I can't actually say to other people.  This is the only place where I can let the mask go completely, because here I am anonymous. Another one of the many faceless bytes of data on the internet. Tomorrow, these thoughts will follow me.  They will sting me again and again. But for a very brief time, I can escape them by putting them here. On the outside, I will be fine.  On the inside, dying. And no one will know the difference.

I feel a bit of levity is in order today. Something to remind myself that even though I feel bad, things aren't always going to be bad. So a few fun memories are on the menu for today. 1) There really are grass police in military housing who measure the height of your lawn weekly during growing season to make sure that you dare not allow it to be longer than 2 and 1/4 inches long, that you do not have weed growth in your lawn, and during the winter to make sure you dare not leave a flake of snow on your driveway and the sidewalk in front of your house. Anyway, these all powerful weilders of the citation (3 strikes and you lose your house on base) can be quite the pain in the ass. For example, one year in Minot, North Dakota, we had a massive blizzard followed by four days straight of -75 or colder temperatures. The snow plows drove through during the blizzard, pushing all of the street snow onto the end of our driveway and it had now frozen into a solid block of ice. Now, becaus...

It's interesting how many people believe the mask. I swear that people could see through the mask and know,  but then again most people don't care enough to look deeper. That's the sad truth. Even people who claim to care about me dearly don't see through the mask when I don't want them to. But sometimes, I wish they could see the truth, that beneath my smile and pleasant conversation, beneath the professional focus on my work, beneath my drive to be the best mom to my daughter and show her that I am happy- beneath it all, I am slowly dying inside. It feels like my insides are full of glass shards. It hurts to even breathe sometimes and takes everything I have in me to not break down in tears in front of everyone, to save my tears until after my daughter is in bed and I can let that pain escape in rivers down my cheeks. I say that I am okay. I say that I'm over it, that I'm not torn up inside. That it doesn't kill me every night when I lay down to sl...