Crap!

Stress is not my friend. Of course stress isn�t anyone�s friend but I�m feeling the ravages at the moment and the physical effects are quite unpleasant. With my surgery only two days away this time tomorrow I will be into my pre surgical �fast�. Even though I won�t be under general anesthetic I am still just as nervous as the past surgeries. I just completed my yearly review (self evaluation only the boss�s opinion is yet to come. I am uncomfortable with having the review knowing as I do my intent (not so much intent as my real objective for this coming year) to leave this state and start anew in the Midwest. I keep experiencing a �what am I thinking?� feeling. I love My Darling and I want a future with him but up and moving back to �his place� seems a bit extreme. Of course it�s not like I don�t have a serious benefit but it still feels like I�m joining another family and it scares the crap out of me.

The slightest thing sends me into tears (and I DESPISE crying in front of anyone). The emotions are so many layered and complicated that I can�t even explain them so I leave My Darling at a loss as to what is actually wrong and he vacillates between wondering if he has done something to anger or upset me (which, fairly or unfairly sometimes he has) and being frustrated with me and my emotional crap. This just becomes fuel for the fire inside me.

My friend in this disease was telling me that one of her fears is that she will become the martyr that she believes her mother seeks to be, ever the �Drama Queen� . She beats herself unmercifully when she experiences the emotional overload that often appears, from the outside or simply from our imagined view of the outside looking in, like we too are simply �Drama Queens�. How long before he tires of the crap and wants to get away from me? How much time and effort will I have invested in this new life I am preparing for before I will be forced to start over again? Where will I go and what will I do when yet another world comes crashing down on me? I have managed to convince myself that this time is different, but I am still part of the equation and what if that sameness alone is enough to create the same result.

Here feels safe (I know it is not of course). I am clinging to the belief that the friends I have made here will be lost by my exit (and I know that that isn�t true either). Real friends find a way to stay in each others lives and geographic and work place friends fade away. It is the natural order of things. But if I let myself get involved with his family will they end up amputating me in the end? Fading friendships are so much easier that amputations. I still feel the ghost limbs of friends and the family I lost violently.

I am faced with the privilege of meeting and befriending new people. Initially I will meet people through his family and they by definition will remain his and theirs regardless of how I might like them. In time I will find friends of my own. Like my Darling they will never know the person I was a scant three years ago before I began this transformation.

Have I emerged yet from the cocoon? Are my wings unfurled and drying as I wait to leap onto the breeze to flutter around as I never could before trapped as I was, in my sluggish incarnation, by my addictions and the misery that accompanied that existence. Yet the misery is not completely gone and I�m not sure if it is naturally present or here because of a still masochistic need of mine to hang onto the pain because of its familiarity.

Then again it might just be stress, right?

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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