Down The Rabbit Hole

It has been a difficult year. Not necessarily a bad year. It has had some really really really bad parts. But those have often been counter-balanced by good parts.  Here's where I'm at now: we are moving back to CO... which I have wanted with all my heart for the last 8 or so years. So this is wonderful.  And oh my gosh so freaking hard.  Our house finally hit the market this morning, and we have already had 4 showings.

In the midst of all of this I feel like I am losing my mind. My grip on reality. My emotions. My ability to relate to people.  The marriage went through some very hard times. I chose to stick it out again. One day at a time. I lost my best friend because she didn't want to stick around for the drama. And then when she left I just couldn't let it go. I made an ass of myself. And I have been spiraling ever since. I don't feel like that was the catalyst... maybe just the thing that made it show. That brought my crazy into the light. It didn't create it.

Last night I chose to smoke with Dan which was a terrible. idea. I almost never do it, but I have been so insanely stressed, busy, and upset that I felt it would be helpful. The first time it was. The second time it was. Last night it was like the walls I have been using to hold myself up just crumbled away and left me high, spinning, and dropping down into the despair I fight so hard to stay out of.  Suddenly all of the pain and regret and sorrow I have held in my heart was stripped bare, raw nerves exposed, and I felt like Alice falling down into the to rabbit hole.  I'm glad that Dan was there to make me stand up and helped bring me back to my senses a bit. But that weight I felt. The guilt. The sorrow. The shame. Was so heavy it will not soon leave my heart or mind. It made for a very heavy day.

I've been analyzing a lot, the way in which I process emotion, partly because the intensity of my emotions is curious, but also because Sara, and sometimes Gabriel seem to be showing that same searing intensity.  I believe it is likely related to ADD.  To start, I will say that through insecurity, or mental illness, I often don't actually connect with my emotions.  I know that sounds impossible, but let me explain.  When I feel, I feel super intensely... and yet there is this part of my brain that sits back analyzing my responses. Analyzing the validity of my feelings. Observing and carefully crafting interactions with people in which my emotions or emotional state is made known to someone around me.  It begins to feel like I am faking the emotion, so I step back, re-evaluate the facts, try to compare them against m reaction, and convince myself that I am being genuine, but I A) am too obsessed with how others percieve me - which ironically often backfires. and B) I'm not really normal.

So I read an article about ADHD and emotion, and something called flooding. Where someone with ADHD is capable of feeling something, but not without his or her whole brain latching onto that feeling and going full boar with it. That sounds just like me. And just like Gabriel, and possibly even Sara. Here's what my brain seems to do.  Picture a circle of Trumpet players, all facing outward and waiting.  When emotional stimulus happens its like a Bingo Ball popping into the middle of the trumpets, objectively identifying the emotion that should be felt.  "Cue Angry."  And suddenly all of the trumpets take their cue and play angry emotion as loud as they can, no filter, no volume control, no further analysis of the situation.

I am too tired to type more.
I just want to say that if I am going to lose my mind, as I seem to be doing, it would be so much nicer if I could be oblivious to losing it.  Being acutely aware of my descent into insanity is freaking - excruciating.