Valleys and Plateaus...need more Plateaus

It's been rough the past few weeks here inside my mind. The normal ups and downs have been coming faster and in more devastating fashion recently, like someone taped my heart onto the front car of that new roller coaster at Six Flags I saw while staying with my sister and her husband. It's like I haven't caught my breath completely from a steep hill before I'm plunging downward again.

I have been able to keep my head together though. I'm not leaning toward maudlin bouts of self injury or locking myself in my house and staying in the bed 10 hours a day. I'm still able to focus on what has to get done and do it. Actually, having the animals is often my saving grace because they require me to keep to a schedule.

One of my biggest issues is with change...I know, no one likes change, but my issue is in the immediate time before the change occurs. I think that's why I'm so often late...I can't make myself give up what has my attention in order to move on to the next thing. Once I've moved on, I'm fine, but that moment before I leap into whatever is next is horrifying to me. My mother says that I used to cry whenever I'd see the credits start rolling for movies or shows on TV...but that by the time the next show came on or I found something else to occupy myself I was fine. It's still the same way.

When I first started contemplating actually getting divorced in December of 2004, I thought about it a lot. I was nearly obsessed. I knew that it was the right thing to do because Scott and I had effectively been living as roommates for about three years prior to that point. We had separate beds and separate lives for the most part. We even tended to stay in separate parts of the house, one upstairs and one in the basement. That was an awful way to live for both of us, very lonely and unsatisfying...but I couldn't bring myself to make the change. I finally did it, and wish I'd made the move out of that house sooner because then we wouldn't be in a holding pattern until November of this year to move on with our lives.

I don't know what is causing my current funk...but I've found some words that resonate in a song that I found on a good friend's myspace. The song is called Rain, by Patty Griffin.

It's hard to listen to a hard hard heart
Beating close to mine
Pounding up against the stone and steel
Walls that I won't climb

This describes where I was with Scott. Even when we tried to be close it was very evident that neither of us really felt that way about the other anymore.

Sometimes a hurt is so deep deep deep
You think that you're gonna drown
Sometimes all I can do is weep weep weep
With all this rain falling down

This is where I am now I think...the current funk. I worry and I fret and I can't seem to push away the negative self talk that I'm all but famous for inflicting upon myself.

Its hard to know when to give up the fight
Some things you want will just never be right
Its never rained like it has tonight before

This verse conjures memories of me agonizing over the decision to leave Scott...to leave everything I'd known, the life we'd built...though in retrospect we didn't build anything...we stagnated where we fell like apples falling out of an overburdned tree.

Now I don't wanna beg you baby
For something maybe you could never give
I'm not looking for the rest of your life
I just want another chance to live

This verse reminds me of the new friend I've made, to whom I think I got a little too close last weekend...I won't hurt you, you've been through enough already. I promise. Just know that I care.

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
When I'm still alive underneath this shroud
Rain Rain Rain

I'm still alive under my own shroud. I just hope that the rain lets up soon because I think I just spotted a leak...

From "Be Careful" by Patty Griffin
Be careful how you bend me
Be careful where you send me
Careful how you end me
Be careful with me