the gerbil wheel of crazy thinking

There is a family-oriented educational experience my children attend during the school year, and it has finally ended and OHMYGOD am I ever glad. It is so exhausting and I struggle to decide if the exhausting is worth the reward.

Sometimes we visit with friends afterward at their home, and my darlings can barely contain themselves when they are waiting to play. To say they are in their glory does not even scratch the surface of how happy they are together.

I learned to believe some really awful things about myself, growing up as I did. I am always surprised when someone thinks I'm alright, flabbergasted to discover I'm liked, and I just flat-out don't believe that I'm truly loved.

I must drive my husband bonkers.

(See? There I go...)

My friend, the mother of my children's friends, has other lovely friends, some that I am having the pleasure of getting to know. (More crazy: I am petrified of meeting new people.) The past two time we have had plans to get together, she invited one of those other lovely friends.

My self-doubt (self-loathing, distrust, etc.) started whispering in my ear. It was quiet at first.

Oh, look, someone else is here, I bet she would rather spend time with HER than YOU. 

She is so NICE. You are such a pain in the ass, and you drink SO MUCH COFFEE. Why can't you just drink tea when you are with her? 

What a lovely, soft-spoken, genuinely normal woman. Why would either of them want to talk to you? What do you possibly have to offer either of them? You should just go home. 

Three never works, just let them be two and everything will be so much better. 


I bet she invited another person over to be a buffer. She knows you'll be much quieter and more reserved if someone new is around, and she just doesn't want to deal with you.

And it just gets louder and louder and faster and faster in my head until I'm just sick about the whole situation. I know, someplace deep in my head, that this is really ridiculous, and I don't actually believe any of those things about my friend. She is kind and lovely, and I know that if something were amiss, she would tell me. Also, I have talked to her about this brand of crazy that I have going on, because I really value our friendship and I hope she understands that there's a difference between my whacked reality and what really is. And also? THAT I KNOW THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO.

I expect my relationships to fail. I hope that they won't, but that expectation of failure is so pervasive in every facet of my life. I am always waiting for failure to hit. I work so hard to beat failure, to outsmart it, to run faster, perform better, do more. In my nightmares, I trip and fall and I always let someone down. I let myself down, I let my husband and children down, I turn my friends away.

My therapist is having me read a book about healing from sexual abuse as a child; I'm digesting the Denial and Acceptance section. For healing to occur, I have to accept that this really happened to me. I am spinning on this gerbil wheel. I have no proof, excepting my crazy, my broken, my guilty, my nightmares-  and who's to say that those things didn't band together to create this in my head?

But. I can smell things where nothing is. I react badly. I remember how certain things feel. My stomach ties up in knots and I hate myself and my poor husband just wants to have a sex life and I just want to curl up in a ball.

I don't ever think about killing myself. I imagine evaporating or slowly fading from view; what would that look like? Usually, in my imagination, nobody notices, everyone goes on about their business, carrying on.  Even my children. They seem fine, but their eyes become hollow and it scares the fuck out of me.

Would anyone miss me? Have I done anything worthwhile?