Crisis mode- Hooray!! (not sarcasm)

ok, so i'm feeling slightly less dramatic. if i look too closely at my life, it still seems pretty depressing, yeah... endlessly so- BUT i'm trying not to think about it. also, i caved and had lots of milk, and then spent the last week trying to kick it again. so my crazed junkie withdrawal symptoms probably haven't been too helpful. plus i'm off the melatonin.... hmmm. gotta remember to take that tonight.

so, ironically, i have been wishing for a crisis.

seriously.

(now, one might think i am IN a crisis mode, what with all my whining and black depression. not so. this is just the tedium of everyday.)

a nice little earthquake or something. someone should die, start gushing blood, lose a limb or two. that would be awesome... why? because!!! i totally rock in an actual crisis.

here's my theory- so, pretty much all the time, my body FEELS like there is a crisis. fight or flight, that kind of thing. my sensory crap is constantly freaking out. i'm tense, poised to spring, ready to kill the bad guy... except of course, there never is a bad guy. i'm always "overreacting." the noise that just made me jump was NOT a gunshot or even anything remotely threatening... but my heart is pounding, i am SURE there is DANGERDANGERDANGER!!!

are you imagining this?

so, your body is telling you DANGERDANGER!!! but since you are unfortunately not a complete idiot-- your more logical brain can see there is nothing wrong. it tries to assure you that you are freaking out over nothing, just the phone ringing, the cat shifting it's weight. the UPS man has left several packages without mishap- it is very unlikely he will suddenly decide to break in the house and stab you, so it seems a little silly to hide under the bed when he knocks on the door...

but you do. you hide. and you coil your fists.

and the anger is just so huge after awhile, all that coiled adrenaline... wanting something to hit, to fight. but there is only you. stupid, stupid you, freaking out over nothing.

so most of the time, you are the object of all that anger, because it has to go somewhere. and your body's stupidity in creating it in the first place makes it easy to hate yourself for being such a pointless, illogical creature. you and whoever is unlucky or crazy enough to stay in your path.

but here is the wonderful thing about crises... there is something to DO.

instead of a spinning, helpless, pointless-- DANGERDANGER!!! with no one to kill, attack, fight to the death, spinning, spinning, no where to go, turning back in on myself, self-destruction, circling, circling.... there is a beautiful clarity. there is PLAN, KNOW, DIRECTION, GO GO GO

green means go.

i love green.

garret woke me up out of a dead sleep a few weeks ago, and said, "i need you to drive me to the hospital." it was terrific. i usually throw a fit if someone tries to wake me up, takes me a long time, i get tangled in dreams, sure that waking up means death to me. i also have never driven the huge van he has because it is big and scary and i hadn't driven at all in about a year, and of course i hate people and doctors, so there were several "small" things i would have been angry and stressed about under other circumstances. but he looked really bad and i didn't know what was wrong, so i blissfully thought there was a chance he was going to die, and i was able to function perfectly. (btw, he's fine now. had surgery that day and was home later.)

i remember zac as a baby in his car seat, laughing and laughing over a shel silverstein poem i had just told him--

when the light is green you go, when the light is red you stop, but what do you do when the light turns blue, with orange and lavender spots?

he kept doing a big exaggerated shrug as he asked orange and lavender spots??? and then bursting into laughter.

what do i do?

shrug. i dream of hurricanes. i dream of florida. i dream of green lights.

green means GO!