Briarpatch

    Instead of waiting until 2am for my regular self-therapy, tonight I'm getting started early. I figure Hell, why waste a couple of hours sleeping before I start rolling things around in my brain? Why not start early? Why not ramble incoherently as I feel the meds start to kick in? I manage to keep my hands and mind busy through long days of hard work, and then the work is over and I try to relax, but instead my mind takes me on rough journeys. Retracing paths that I have worn through the tangles of the briarpatch that seems to be me these days. I wander these paths, looking for traces of truths that I might have overlooked, passed by, ignored. I hash over conversations, situations, reactions, looking for hope, and finding very little. I know that, even as I seek to uncover my own truths, I still tell myself little white lies to protect myself. In some ways I am doing myself a kindness, trying to limit the amount of stress and angst I am dealing with, by reassuring myself that it will all be fine. In other ways I know I am doing myself a great injustice by not facing solidly up to the truths that are right before my eyes, facing them, acknowledging them and then carrying on with my life. But I can't quite make myself be so brutally honest, as much as I know I should. I can't face the realities that whisper in my ear.
    I am trying to ease myself into the cold, harsh reality as if it were a frigidly cold lake, and I am wading in slowly. Wading in, letting myself go numb and accustomed to the cold a little bit at a time. Slowly, as the cold rises, it does not make me enjoy the frigid water, it just makes it a nearly tolerable cold ache instead of a painful, heart stopping shock to my system. So I wade in slowly, feeling myself go slowly numb as the cold rises up my limbs, approaching my chest, making my breath come in shallow gasps. If I could just face up to the cold, harsh reality and see things as they truely are, then perhaps I would do the wise thing and simply turn around, walk back towards shore, dry myself off and then warm myself in the sun. But I do not always do the wise thing. I have proven that time and again.