One of the reasons why we took our trip to Hawaii in 1999 was to prove to myself that I hadn't made it all up. I have this sneaking suspicion that it was something I had concocted in my own head...

Earlier today, I discovered I had made the most bizarre and humiliating of errors at work. Last week, I had told my boss we do not have a dial-up account with Earthlink. He said we used to. I said that nowhere do I have evidence that we are paying them. I checked our credit card statements. Nope, not there. AOL, yes. Speakeasy, yes. Stupid, moronic airport net that we don't know why we still pay for, yes. Netcom/Earthlink, no.

I got our Visa bill today. Earthlink, yes. Ummm... I opened up the file of old bills. Earthlink in January, yes. WTF?????? Am I losing my mind? Yes.

Nothing compared to Saturday, which I'm not sure I even know how to explain, which is why I haven't tried until now. Plus, it's embarrassing to lose your mind. As I told my shrink, everyone wants to be "normal".

We were out tooling around the Eastside on Saturday after having brunch over there. We were looking for a sports store. For the life of us, we could not find a Big 5. We decided to leave Redmond and head for Bellevue. I perked up, wanting to go to BellSquare. In my mind, he said no, and was being mean. Then I told him not to turn on this road, but the next road. He angrily said that it *was* this road. I stopped talking. I started feeling trapped. Why was I in this car with him, where he refused to take me anywhere *I* wanted to go, and insisted on going the wrong way? It became obvious that he had gone the wrong way. I didn't say anything. I wanted to go home. I didn't say anything. I had upset him, and I didn't want to upset him anymore.

At some point, the tears started building in my eyes. I'm not sure why. I turned my body away from him, to lean against my door, and they started flooding. I was gone. Can't say I want to just go home: he'll get more mad. Can't let him know I'm crying: he'll get more mad. I didn't seem able to even conceptualize taking control of myself. I just kept trying to remain silent so as not to upset him. My eyes closed, I felt the car turning and turning. We were in the BellSquare parking garage, going up.

The car stopped. I wondered what would happen next. He angrily asked, "What now?" I shuddered, cringing, my eyes squeezing tighter, the tears starting anew. I was still facing the window. I started allowing myself to make noise. He only got more upset. "What?" he kept asking. Everytime, I shuddered more. I was afraid. Afraid of angering him more. I was afraid of what he would do. I was afraid of him. I said I was sorry. Then I couldn't stop. Every time I thought of something to say, it just came out, "I'm sorry."

I started to wonder what was happening. Whenever I said I was sorry, he asked me why. I couldn't respond. I couldn't stop saying I was sorry. Except to variate to, "Please don't be mad." In my mind, I was trying to figure a way out. Stop crying, turn and face him. This isn't working. He's only getting more mad. Get over this. Talk to him. Anything.

I just kept saying I was sorry. Suddenly things got familiar. I was in here, rational me, but I wasn't allowed to talk. I could say to myself, "No, I don't want to do this. Stop and turn around. Talk to him." And my mouth would mumble, "I'm sorry" one more time. I started freaking out. Started panicking. I started to hyper-venilate and sob.

Finally he said, "OK," more quietly, and began to touch me and pet my hair. He kept saying it was ok, trying to soothe me. I started to calm down, but I still couldn't say anything I wanted to say. I just kept repeating I was sorry.

I started to focus. I wanted him to know I was still there. I wanted to prove I was still there. I finally formed a new phrase. "I'm here." I chanted it like a mantra. Then, a new phrase. "I can talk." Emphasis on "I". Intersperse new mantras, trying to calm down.

Can I really talk? Force it. Now. Just do it. Take back control. I started talking. Very short phrases. About how I'm sorry I overreacted, that I was still here, that I was scared, that this wasn't about him, that something bad had just happened.

When I was finally able to connect enough phrases together to make sense, I told him that I had somehow talked myself into something worse after he yelled at me. He said he never yelled at me. He said he never said we couldn't go to the mall. I wondered about that. I still wonder about that. I told him that I was afraid. Afraid of him. Afraid of what would happen. And then I couldn't talk. I was in there, thinking, wanting to talk, to explain, but I was physically unable to. And that had terrified me. Still terrified me.

I told him it was just like in college when we were at the dorms. I had broken somehow. Don't worry. It's nothing you had done. Something had just happened to me. He said he was still upset, I had made him upset, because he had *not* been mad at me until I stopped talking to him, and he just had to shut that down to console me. He couldn't wrap his mind around what had happened, and I couldn't wrap my mind around his response, why he hadn't figured out that I was broken and needed his help. I did not help things by pointing this out.

finally, what little tissues we had in the car were used up, and I was still a mess. We decided to go in and find a bathroom get me cleaned up. The day got much better quite quickly after I had done that. But I was still afraid.

I talked to my shrink about it Monday. I told her this has happened twice before. The first time in college, and the worst time. Sometimes, my husband says things that I just can't wrap my mind around quickly enough, I'm so upset that I can't see how to get past it, and I instantly feel a violet response coming on. And I let it happen that time. I picked up a plastic hanger and physically attacked a free-standing room fan. 3 or 4 good whacks. Stunned, I refused to make eye-contact with him or say anything. I dropped the hanger, walked over to the closet, stepped inside, and closed the door behind me. It wasn't that big, but big enough to stand in. There was no light. I hear him walk out and close the door behind him. I started crying. I fell apart. I had no idea what had just happened. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I had no idea how to get past this. I just stood in that closet, immobile & crying, for over 10 minutes. I realized something was wrong. Very wrong. I slowly came out. I crossed the room and picked up the phone. Everything seemed so difficult. I called his dorm room. He picked up. And then it happened. I couldn't talk. Not a single word. I panicked. I thought he would hang up and I would be all alone. I would die here. I would be alone. Finally, I sobbed out of desperation. He told me he was coming over.

Once he came back and put me into his arms, I think everything went back to normal pretty quickly. But I don't remember. I seem to be very good at blocking these sorts of things out. But I vividly remember being terrified that I could think, form ideas in my head, realize something was horribly wrong, and scream in my own head to just fucking talk. But I couldn't do any of it out loud.

There was one other occassion. A few years after the first, at our first apartment. I just remember it as a flash, of being in the bed and him consoling me, and me being unable to talk. Feeling afraid and trapped again. I think it was a much shorter episode, and that's why I don't really remember it. I don't think my husband remembers it either.

My shrink got me to remember an even earlier time, but I'm not sure if it's the same thing, or even related. Something about talking with my first boyfriend about how something was wrong with me sexually. We had an odd conversation talking about our hang ups. We went outside and sat on a rock, talking. We were both crying. I kept repeating, "I'm crazy". I remember being so upset, so convinced something was terribly, irreversably wrong with me. I'm not sure if I was just really upset, or if I couldn't talk that time too.

She asked if there was anything before that experience, and I told her I didn't think so. I was pretty quiet as a girl. I went into my own head alot, but that was to fantasize and daydream. These all seemed to be some sort of social interaction (or social in-action), and I didn't have alot of social interactions as a girl that I don't clearly remember. They're all pretty memorable in their uniqueness. I mean, my family was horrible, and I didn't make my first friends until I was 11.

Anyway, I was terrified. Don't ask me why, because I know better, but I made the classic mistake of lumping in schizophrenia with multiple-personality disorder. She told me I was definitely not schizophrenic. I felt like an idiot for even bringing it up. But MPD, that really freaked me out. I've always worried about my suspicions that something happened to me as a girl that I can't remember, that could explain my weird sexual hang-ups. And these two things together remind me of a friend in high-school telling me about a book that I think was titled "When Rabbit Howls". About a woman who was molested from her very first year of life, who developed probably dozens of other personalities to deal with it. And because she had no words when it began, the earliest one was "Rabbit", who simply howled at the pain. That gives me the shivers every time I think of it.

But shrink was pretty damn sure it wasn't MPD. She said that people aren't aware of their other personalities. But they're usually aware of large chunks of time missing from their lives, over the course of their lifetime. She was pretty sure this was not what was happening.

What she does think is that this is some sort of coping strategy that I developed at a very young age. She sees it as me not quite being there, not quite in control of reality. And so I might have used it alot when I was younger, so young that I don't remember it. We talked about the idea that I have a tendency to have problems with reality, and that it's probably all tied into coping strategies developed when I was quite young. I mean, let's not forget the whole reason why I went to her in the first place: because I was in love with a man who only existed in my dreams. If you're confused, you should really read my early entries. They're much different than what you get these days.

So we talked about memories, or rather, if I could be blocking any. She said that there are ways to find out, but usually the person is ready for them. Either they come out on their own when their mind wants it to happen, or there's some trigger that helps it along, most usually in raising their child. Or else you decide that you really want to know, usually because there's a complete block in getting healthy without the information, and you do hypnosis. She was very cautious. I told her that I had always been curious. And had toyed with the idea of finding a therapist for years before I finally saw her, just to see if I could find out what happened to me as a girl.

But the truth is that therapy has been working quite well for me. I don't need to keep focusing on my past and blaming my family for everything. I have my own life, which I'm trying to manage and cultivate and grow, and I don't really think I need to know everything about my past to do that. She agreed.

But I can't help occassionally wondering...

Anyway, another point to make is that this episode was probably my own fault. I do it every time we go on vacation. I pack up my meds and forget to take them. Then when we get back to town, they sit in my bag, and sometimes I remember to take them, but most days I don't. And it takes me forever to remember to remove them from my bag and put them into the bathroom to get back into my morning routine of taking them when I brush my teeth. This time, I was on vacation for 2 weeks, and they spent another 2 weeks in my purse. That's a whole month of having little or no meds in my system. Yikes!

Of course, this makes me realize something else. If it only takes a month for me to have an episode like this, after all this time in therapy, the chances look bad for me ever going off the drugs and living a normal life. Shrink thought this was ridiculous. She said that a person with mild diabetes, they can go off the drugs, adhere to a VERY strict diet, and constant rigorous exercise, and have nearly normal blood tests. But why would you do that? If the drugs work, and you have to torture yourself to force your body to be normal on it's own, why would you want to? She had a point. But that's when I mentioned that everyone wants to be normal. When was the last time someone was happy to hear they had diabetes? So what if meds help, there's still something wrong with you for the rest of your life.

I guess I'm still not comfortable that I have something that I'll never be able to fix. I'll only ever be able to learn to live with and deal with it. To work around it. That may not be bad. It should be ok. I should even be able to live a seemingly-normal life. But it sucks that I'm playing at a disadvantage against everyone else, I guess.

---

Today turned out to be a kick-ass day, despite starting off with a headache. I took lots of drugs, and my cramps didn't make an appearance, so the drugs knocked that headache right out. Then I went to town on my workload. Or rather, I tried to, then I got two very important projects that I thought I had some time left to work on thrown back in my lap to finish ASAP. And I did.

And it snowed all day. So fucking cool. It didn't stick, except to the trees, which was amazing. So all day I'm wishing I had a window. And then when I'm at the window, I'm wishing I was outside. I finally got my wish when my 2nd important assignment required an errand. It was so wonderful to be out in the snow. Big, foofy flakes landing on my windshield. My idea of heaven. Perfect. When I left for the day, it was 5:30 and getting close to dark, and it was still snowing.

But I bucked up, braved the snow, and went to the gym. And I am really liking my new routine. While I was out of commission for those many months, I spoke to a friend about my concerns, and I got some tips from him, and now I've streamlined it so I have plenty of time to get my aerobic exercise in with my weights, and increase the amount of sets I do too. Awesome. It's been a long time since I've had that many endorphins coursing through me. I wanted to get home and get some nookie with my honey-bunches-of-oats. Alas, as always happens, I was starving. And anyway, he wasn't home yet. By the time he gets home, I'm all into my comfort-zone, and he's starving and looking for chow, not tail. *sigh* Oh well. The weekend thing has been working out just fine for us, I think.

Soooo... I think that's about all I had for today. Christ, I've written something like 5 entries in 7 days or something. I can barely remember the time when I used to write that often! Maybe it's my lack of sanity lately? I have wondered if the trend not to write is tied to me feeling pretty happy with my life. Except I'm still happy with my life, just kind of concerned about my mental capacities. Oh well. Today turned out pretty nifty, so we'll just have to see about tomorrow. Love to you all!

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