Grace, shut up and go fix me a cheese quesadilla!

I don’t understand how I can sleep for 3 days straight and then not sleep for 3 days. Plagued by nightmares from about 3am (when I finally went to sleep) and 7am when I decided it wasn’t even worth trying to rest. I dreamed of his hands…big and calloused, creeping out from under my bed and hurting me…his hard cold eyes staring through me. Fear was running through me like a river.

At 7:00am when I gave up on sleeping, I decided to take a bath to try to wash the filth from my body. I don’t know why I thought that I would be able to feel clean today, since I haven’t been able to accomplish that in over 30 years. I lay in the bathtub watching the skin on my thighs turn from a milky white to a burning red from the scalding water I started to cry. I sat in the steaming water shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, unable to understand why I still felt so cold when the water was nearly sizzling my skin. Why wasn’t I able to feel the warmth from the water? Why can’t I just forget? Why do I have this stupid body anyway? I hate this body and everything it represents. I seem to be going through another round of “How many baths/showers a day will Grace take before she actually feels clean?” games again. Yesterday it was 3 before I gave up…

All of these highs and lows are so draining and confusing….unpredictable. I never know how I will feel from one minute to the next. I’m not sure what needs to change or happen inside of me, but I need it to happen soon. I don’t want more medication, that isn’t the answer; I don’t know what is… It’s difficult to predict what might set off another acute case of trauma brain and so I live in a constant state of panic. It could be a scene in a movie, a song, a restaurant, a man sitting to close to me on a plane telling me over and over again how much I remind him of his daughter…ugly orange marigold flowers outside the McDonald’s drive thru in the spring. How do you make all that go away? I don’t think I can try any harder.

I’m tired. I extended an invitation to a girlfriend and her family to spend New Years with us here, and she accepted. Right now I refuse to live my life in seclusion because I know it’s better for me to be around people I enjoy spending time with. And yet at the same time I am angry at social Grace for continuing to make plans when I’m so exhausted and I want to crawl inside of my shell and hide.

I am not well, but I continue to feel this invisible force that pushes me gently to trust myself and the therapist (you thought I was going to say *the process*, didn’t you?). But seriously, if the therapist doesn’t stop using those cliché *therapy* phrases on me, I’m going to have to find her “Top 10 things to say to clients inflicted with crazybrain” book and hold a book burning ceremony in the parking lot of her office. “You are courageous and the moments that I can witness this with you are an honor for me.” Didn’t I read that in a Hallmark card for crazybrains? No “honoring” – please – I just want to get through it so it stops hurting.  Even though I think my therapist is rockin' awesome for putting up with me (at least in this *present moment*) how many clients have not heard their therapist utter, "It is an honor to witness your f'd up crazybrain in action." Is that just me? 

I’d better jam now – I am cooking dinner for my friends tonight and I need to ensure there is not one speck of dust in the house lest they think I’m a filthy pig…cleanliness is next to Godliness ya know. On that thought I should go take another bath…