Holding it all together is an art form in some ways. Years and years of practice getting up every day and moving though life even when your impulse is to stay in bed and pull the covers over your head. It�s normal to feel that, every one does from time to time. When does that feeling cross the line and when does the mere act of getting out of bed join the ranks of the incredible feats. It is the question that has lingered for me over and over, year after year, is there something actually wrong with me or am I just weak. Why does it seem to me as though I am whining all the time and to the people around me that I don�t share my feelings, that I am stoic? How is there this disconnect? How much is too much information? When do I begin to sound like a broken record, �oh look at me I�m sad, I�m depressed, my life is too much for me� boo friggin hoo. I hate my weakness and hate even more the voices in my head. I know everyone has the voices (not the kill everyone in the house voices just the commentary on the world and your inadequacies when measured against everyone else you encounter). The �I should have saids�, the �what will I do if they�� and the simple �idiot, idiot, idiot�. I war between a feeling that I am indeed flawed, broken, emotionally unstable, and the feeling that I am making excuses and I could do this if I just set my mind to it. What if I am not made this way and I could do this if I wanted it more? How does this change my world?

I can stop feeling so inadequate. I can pay more attention to the world around me. I can ignore the voices in my head that shout at me or worse yet whisper in the background of everything I do. I want to be distracted from it all, I want to disappear in other things, everyday things. I don�t want to talk about me and the crazy imaginary world that I inhabit; the world where I get to have the same conversations again and again some of which never happen and all of which go different from my expectation no matter how I might have imagined them or how many times I have imagined them. I know for sure that they will never go the way I plan or hope and no amount of running it though my head will change the past or influence the future but I still do it, over and over all the time. It is ridiculous and embarrassing and I scarcely care to admit it to myself let alone you.

So am I crazy or not? Can I just pay more attention, or respond faster? DO I have a mental illness or have I just landed on an excuse to never really get any better than I am right now. Can I get better? Will I every get to the point when I don�t disappoint? What about when I start to disappoint Baby Boy, I will if I continue to be like this. I will disappoint him and he will see how insane I am and then he won�t respect me. I don�t command respect from the people who are most important to me, I am not a person who commands respect, I can�t do some of the simplest things, I can�t find the words to express myself. I am in love with words and I struggled for over a minute coming up with the word armrest. I called it a side thing, with the stuff in it, how stupid is that? It makes me crazy that I can�t find the words to say what I want and even crazier that I can�t say what I feel. I struggle with the thoughts and when I want to talk I stumble over the thoughts, words, even the emotions that elicited the desire to talk. I come up short all the time. I think I am talking about things and then in the end it was only the voices in my head that were privy to my thoughts and fears. I thought I told you, I thought I shared but in the end it was like everything else, my imagination, all in my head. It�s not real, all a dream like the fairytale of me as performer, me as entertainer, me as Martial Artist me as writer. It isn�t real and never will be. The only thing that is real is me as barely functioning human trying to pretend she�s real. A modern day Pinocchio moving though life, trying to be real. Can you see my lie? Is my nose growing?

Everyone else does it. I know it�s not easy for anyone, everyone struggles sometime, but everyone else does it, why can�t I?

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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