It's funny what can send a person into her dark places. Sometimes it's something seemingly small, an idle comment made by someone while you are in Target, buying socks, being flipped off by an obnoxious driver for no discernible reason...little things. A dear friend asked me once what it felt like to be "crazy" (my word, not his). I told him it feels like beating against the inside of my own skull, trying to get out or trying to get a moment's relief from the old tape recorded messages, the nauseating swirl of anger, despair, self-loathing, fear, and deep down sadness that I feel in my guts. And everything I know of that stops that feeling is something self-destructive. There's this great movie starring Jeanine Garofalo (sp?); I can't remember the title. She plays this suicidal woman, and at one point she states "I am so sick of myself". That's how it feels. But you can't get away from yourself.

You know, people always say that when you're really f***ed, you should reach out. But we don't want that, not really. Nobody wants to hear about the dark places. It's too scary, I guess. And most people really feel like they don't know how to help. I guess they don't realize how useful it can be just to let someone talk, without judgement. I ran into this group of New Agers who had this idea that we are responsible for every single thing in our lives. If we get hit by a car on the way to work, we somehow caused that. I told one of the more obnoxious of these people to go tell that to the families of the people who died in 9/11. Yeah, tell them that their sons and daughters and fathers and mothers drew a hijacked plane into their lives.

I hate dumping my problems on other people, but I have to put it somewhere. Posting in cyberspace feels a bit like putting a message in a bottle, somehow more hopeful than writing in a diary. YOu at least feel like you are communicating with other human beings, not just talking to yourself. I hate the insistence in my culture (southern USA) that you smile, smile, smile, even when you feel like you are dying on the inside. I hate the layers of pretense in my rich family, how they harp on small things (the new SUV, the new flower arrangement) and ignore the Really Important Things, like playing "don't ask, don't tell" will make problems evaporate. That is one of the reasons I stay away from them, but then they try to put me at fault for keeping a distance, like there's something (else) wrong with me because I don't want to be around them. How do I tell them they sort of make me sick? I don't; it's not right. I'm rambling...