Update on the Pit

Last night, after dinner, I received this e-mail from a very dear friend of mine, even before I had seen all the comments and e-mails that I had gotten from all you in BlogLand:

The more I look at your blog today, the more I see how far you have come. Yes, these are "virtual people" to some degree, but you've gotten to know them a bit, and this was your first real opening up to community. That's a real step forward, though all outward appearances may appear to be a life out of control. See it as a practice run for talking with your own living group community. You've seen how compassionate a lot of people have been. Trust that you can evince a similar compassion from those who see you every day. It's okay if you cry some. This is real life, and I think most people respect REAL. This is not [fake people you have to deal with] fakery. This is real stuff. You've come a long way, baby.

Which then made me really wonder what all had been said, so I bounced over to my gmail address. Dagnabit, y'all (or is it ya'll?) made me start crying all over again!

Heading upstairs for dinner, I was all nervous because I knew I needed to say something, but how in the world do you bring something like this up without it sounding like a cop-out -- especially when you realize that you yourself feel that it's a cop-out, that you're just making excuses for being a lazy-butt? Then, I got up there and everyone else was already seated and there was this (seeming to me) odd silence. Then I got paranoid that one of them was gonna say something, and I wanted to get credit for saying it first, so after two almost-ready-to-dive-in-when-someone-else-asked-some-mundane-question-about-someone's-day, I finally managed to say something along the lines of "I'm sorry things have been less than ideal with me lately." Which was about all I could make myself say before needing to regain composure and, wouldn't you know it, Sister Somewhat Hard-of-Hearing has to ask "What'd you say" and so I had to take another twenty minutes (seemed like) to be able to spit it out again.

I then proceeded to bawl my way through dinner, telling them that I can see things as having been getting progressively out of whack for about a month (which probably means that it's been longer than that), that I'm not sure what the trigger is or why it's manifesting itself like this before (since it's never interfered with "normal functioning" to the extent that it's hugely noticable to others -- but, then again, it's been different every time), that maybe things'll settle out once the new semester begins tomorrow and I'm back into a "schedule" again, that maybe it's just been a build-up from moving and everything else that went on this fall (deaths, etc.) and having the down-time of break just brought it all to the surface .....

They asked what they could do, if I needed someone to knock on my door in the morning. I pointed out how that might help, but that then even makes me feel like a cop-out since everyone else is able to get up in the morning; they kinda dismissed that, saying that sometimes we need a little extra help. Of the two I was really concerned about, one was glad I said something because it gave her a very different understanding of what was going on; the other gave pointers of her own. The other two folks asked what they could do (or shouldn't do, if I knew anything that was a trigger), and thanked me for saying it because they know how hard it is to do.

Later, as I was reading all the wonderful comments, the other sister who lives in the basement came down and I asked her if she could knock on my door in the morning. She said sure, asked it I wanted it before or after her shower, and if I wanted her to make sure I was up or just knock. I said, "Just knock, although if I don't show up ...."; she said she'd come down and get me, and again acknowledged how hard it can be.

So, I'm thinking that with all the major prayers and well-wishes from you folks, and the guilt of "What my house is saying" lifted, that hopefully things can begin to at least settle out a little bit. At least some of the paranoia can be gone (although I'm really hoping that if they've been reporting back to the powers-that-be about me, that this also gets reported back!).

So, that crisis at least somewhat averted. I have my group tonight, so we'll see what comes of that .... of course, now I'm feeling OK about everything, which tends to make me feel like I don't need to say anything, so that's a new area to work on .....

And now I must see if any of my kids have e-mailed me their gospel projects, because I really don't want to fail anyone in religion class, but since grades are due at noon tomorrow and this is a major grade ..... I'll be back with more updates, but in the meantime, thank you all.