there was a strange and disorienting dream this morning:

i am living with a boy in a small and buggy apartment. everything is new to me, and strangely unfamiliar. my boyfriend is young, about 18, tall and stocky. he has black dyed hair and jelly bracelets. we talk a little as i hurry around, getting ready for work. i ask him about our current life for it seems that i have forgotten everything...i do not even know this boy�s name.

i am late and rushing around trying to find clothes and toiletries in this place, our apartment, our home. i notice that my boyfriend has a kitty fountain, just like the one TT and i have, except dark blue. he has laid this fountain at the head of the bed, a futon on the floor, and completely filled it to overflowing with potato chips. i think that later we will have a conversation about insects�but after work.

i am almost completely dressed, just looking for shoes when i see this boyfriend feeding a cute asian child in a highchair. Eww! that kid isn�t mine, is it? and he tells me no. i am relieved that this child is not my responsibility. i notice that the child has two bleached streaks in her bowl-cut hair and i think that at least he may raise her well.

at this point in the dream i am happy that i have my TT for neither of us want children, but then i look around again at my apartment and boyfriend and realize that i have dreamt TT up, completely. this reality is not a bad life, my young boyfriend and i have a place to live and at least i have a job...though i know not where. this boy obviously loves and adores me � even though i seem to have absolutely forgotten everything about our life�but it is not my life with TT.

*sigh*

i woke up, again, this morning distraught and full of anxiety.
last night i cried all through dinner at insanemex, actually wringing my hands and fearing the worst. i explained that it was an attack of sorts, and in a while would be better�he smiled at me across the table, full of support, and held my hands.
i am so very much better now than three years ago, but sometimes i still have attacks and sad, which would be much easier to handle if i knew for certain that every time i experienced them � the loss of balance over the chasm, the mis-step or tilt � if i knew for certain that there was no chance of toppling in and loosing me.

mostly now it seems to me that i am away from the cliffs and have a much more stable footing�if i trip i just smack cold and hard earth�but sometimes the chasm comes back and it is at these times when i doubt everything solid and beautiful in my life. i become certain that my TT will go � either through death or leaving � our home, my job, our kitties�everything safe utterly destroyed.

it is this kind of self-destructive thinking that causes such things to happen.

my lungs are tied in with my anxiety and this morning they are tight and small. i gasp. it is often that when upset i wake with a pneumonia-like feeling, very fluid filled and shallow�breathing that hurts, the deeper i suck in the air the more these tendrils of pain burrow. i have had pneumonia, yes, and this feeling is so very similar�only this goes away with the sad.

today is breathing deep and calming down�today is watching a movie and getting lost in the subplot�today is regaining my footing and resituating myself in our lovely life.

today is burying my nose in kittens and a book. today is caesar salad and strong coffee.

today is sanity.

this is my life, afterall, and i make happen what will.
these things do not control me, not now, not again.

i believe that everyone can save themselves, pick back up the pieces, rebuild�

yes.
mostly it is the decision that is the hard part. the decision to get help if needed, the decision to change, the decision to spend some serious one on one time with yourself�the decision to throw away selfish and self-pitying crutches and excuses, take some responsibility and care -- and grow the fuck up.