It's funny how you think when you grow up life is going to be different somehow. Less confusing, more happy... and really, it never changes. I don't want to stick my head in the sand; my mother is a good example of why not to live like that. And yet, I don't know what to do. I'm paralyzed by the enormity of the problems. I keep thinking "oh, well once THIS happens everything will be better..." but it never seems to work out that way.

I created a whole secret identity to blow off steam, but without some sort of responses it's like shouting into the ether. It's instructive now to go back and read about some of the things I was venting about, or whining about - some of which I'm still venting about to this day, amusingly. Or not amusingly, actually. But there's no great sense of release; no advisory responses, no commiseration - none of the human responses that help you when you're in an emotional crisis.

I used to not know who I was. For many years now, I've not had that problem - granted, I still don't really know what I want to do when I grow up, but I didn't feel centerless. I don't know if it's the depression that's grown over the structure that is "me" like kudzu, obscuring the lines and leaving only a shapeless mass that *might* be a person - or the stress - or, what the nasty voices in my head say: there was never anything there to begin with. While I know that's not true, dealing with it takes away precious (and scarce) emotional and mental energy that I desperately need for the REAL things that are going on.

I know that suicide isn't the answer. I couldn't do that to my children. Sometimes I think it'd be a blessing to my husband - he wouldn't be a single dad for long. But the emotional damage I'd probably do in bowing out like that would probably be pretty horrific. The part of me that knows he loves me doesn't want to do that to him. The part of me that knows he's tired of dealing with me wonders if he made a list of pros & cons at the moment, what he'd decide.