Ever see the train of insanity heading down the tracks and it is your face on the engine?  No one else to blame and you can't seem to get out of your own way?

I have been sick for about a month.  Kept going, been out having a lot of summer fun, trying to buy my first house, trying to take care of myself and everything else.  Then the last two weeks the sickness takes a firm hold.  Doc gives me steriods and antibiotics but I just keep getting worse and the steriods are now making me not sleep . . . for days . . . and I start gaining some serious weight.  Then the house I have been trying to buy for months - that is within my reach - sells on the auction block with no warning for 25k less than what I was offering.  I fight.  I am reaching out to everyone I can get my hands on, lawyer, Dept of Real Estate, Fannie Mae fraud department, Bank of America.  We find the person who bought the house at auction and offer to buy it.  They accept.  Looks like the house is going to be mine.  MONTHS of fighting.  Then I talk to my kid, who was SO VERY excited to go to the big city, start college - can't wait to get out of the small town.  Since graduation she has been having a LOT of fun and making new friends.  Now she is not sure she wants to go.  Wow.  I keep using my tools - just trying to keep myself emotionally above water.  "These are all gold-plated problems" I am told.  And I agree.  Things could be much, much worse.

But I am tired, ya know?  When I get sick I have a real rough time emotionally.  I feel lonely, vulnerable, and play the victim very well.  Just the strength to hold those feelings in, not let them out in my actions, and fight them with the truth  takes a lot of effort.  Sometimes the tools of Al-Anon, while effective, are very heavy to wield.  So yesterday I work all day, go grocery shopping, drop of the 3rd earnest money check for this darned house - and by the end I can barely stand.  I am running a fever and just done.  Daughter leaves to spend the night at a friends house and I fall apart.  Now, looking through the window you would see nothing abnormal.  Have some good music playing, house is clean, take my temp and take some meds.  Draw a bath.  Stumble getting out but end up on the couch and slept the whole night through for the first time in a long time.  Inside my head it was a scene from a movie.  I was the psych ward patient strapped to the bed writhing and screaming.  All I wanted to do was call my ex.  I don't usually miss him and see our relationship and the need to be apart logically with no regrets.  But now . . . he would come save me (chooo chooo . . . here comes the train!!!).  I dial his number many times but luckily don't hit send.  I just kept turning it over.  This too shall pass.  Look at this logically, you are sick and what you are feeling IS NOT REAL.  I just sit in the bath and cry and keep telling myself that this won't last forever and none of it is real.  These are all stories I am making up in my head.  The night in shining armor does not exist.  What you are wishing for and what you will get are polar opposites. 

This is addiction, pure and simple.  This is what alcoholics experience when they want to drink.  That little voice that tells them that this time will be different, they are not addicts, they don't have a problem.  I kept telling myself that it will be different this time.  Just call, it will be alright.   He will come and it will all be different . . . the fantasies seemed so real and so attainable.  Fever, lack of sleep, insanity . . .

Another little voice saved me last night.  Everytime I picked up the phone I talked myself out of it with the outcome for me . . . what the reality was for me.  Then all of a sudden the thought occurs to me.  What would this do to him?  Haven't I hurt him enough?  That's all we are to each other is pain, and I am done hurting someone else.  I was being selfish and willing to hurt someone else to make myself feel better.  Seems I have done that a lot with him.  Wow.  Ouch.  I put the phone down and it was over.  I love him much better from over here.  I don't want to hurt him anymore.  I just want him to be happy and for some strange reason, as hard we as both try, we are not happiness for each other.  In looking at "my part" of our relationship I have tried hard to identify my behaviors and where I was responsible.  But I never really looked at THAT . . . the pain I caused him - sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not.  That was a BIG wake up call.  I don't want to be that person anymore.

So today, the fever is gone and I have slept.  I am still really tired and going to take care of myself today, but I feel so much lighter.  The truth, as painful as it is, is so freeing.  As much as I have dug through my own stuff and looked for answers and my part, I guess I just needed to be ready for this . . . it needed to be the right time.  "And more will be revealed". . . I have to keep working it and I will never graduate.

Thanks for listening.

Tricia