coffeebarconfessions

My brain is a jumbled, churning whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. Fifty urgent tasks ticker-tape through my mind at a frenzied pace. I've got so many different interests pulling on me, it feels like my limbs are being racked on a Medieval torture device. To compound my frustration, all this turmoil only leaves me utterly spent, exhausted, collapsed. I feel like I'm being sucked down, stuck to the earth, unable to get up off the floor. Sick or not, I've gotta get a grip! If I can't catch the whirling ball of my own reality before it crashes to smithereens, nobody will! So I turned on the Werner Erhard documentary Transformation , about his infamous  est  seminars from the '70's and '80's. Last year his hard-core philosophy of personal-responsibility, wrapped up in a bunch of insults aimed toward the stupidity of humanity, helped me reign in my out-of-control life. Somewhere between now and then I regressed back to my old patterns of anger, bitterness an...

I'm on the verge of cracking up, again. My constant and pervasive anger over pretty much everything is threatening to swallow my life whole, again. The burden of my reality has become too much to bear. Again. Realizing it's only been one year and three months since I sat in the exact same trough does nothing to focus my racing thoughts. In fact, it only grows my panic. Where on earth did I find the power to change my thinking and get my health to a stable place? My memory tells me juicing made me feel a lot better, and accepting reality for reality's sake reigned in my consuming frustration. I'm still juicing, desperate to regain a semblance of an immune system after my absurdly destructive move to California, but I've completely lost my grip on accepting my life. When my eyes flipped open this morning negative thoughts swirled around my brain. But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't face one more angry walk with the dogs. Another day full of frustrated glance...

Hindsight is so golden. I'm sitting here desperately trying to regain the quality of life I worked so hard to achieve in Arizona. It's not working. I'm back to falling asleep after 2 AM and getting up at 11, keep injuring myself at the gym, and am so damn bitchy I'd do anything to get away from me! My discipline is sorely lacking and anger is back to defining the way I spend my days. Sigh. I've already danced this tango, and almost didn't survive it once! It was so much work, but I actually got to a place of ownership in my life, and felt like I had a modicum of control over my circumstances. And then I had to go and move back to California. Despite the raging heatwave scorching the Southland, and my broken air conditioner, I don't regret the choice to relocate. I just don't know why everything had to go so seriously wrong for months on end. When I start recanting the litany of ills we've endured; movers not showing up, car accidents, broken applianc...

“There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.”   ~Jose N. Harris I heard Samuel L. Jackson's wife once answered a question about the secret to the success of her forty year marriage with "amnesia." Apparently she got a lot of flack for her frankness. Personally, I think she's brilliant. So right on the money I had to tell my husband of thirteen years. We laughed, and wholeheartedly agreed with Mrs. Jackson. Of course other elements must be present for a long-term relationship to sustain, such as love, compatibility, respect and a desire to be there. But sometimes you just gotta forget the past. It won't ever change, and is so flippin' awful if the ...

Thank the good Lord in heaven, I'm finally coming down off my reign of crazy. Even if the nasty septic tank of circumstances I find myself sitting in makes me want to run right back into insanity's open arms just for a distraction. The biggest lesson I can glean from all of this mayhem is that I can't do mayhem! Unfortunately, most people don't get to decide when, where and what to be stressed about in life. It's kind of something that just happens, a biological reaction to too much uncertainty or too heavy of a demand. Who are those people that walk through life's storms with a smile of assurance radiating from deep within their soul? How did they get that way? Can I ever be like that, or am I destined to be the reactionary, defensive, self-destructive spirit I've always been? Inquiring minds want to know! I'm learning so much about myself it's not even funny. While I've experienced one giant, rolling flare after another, I've also never bee...

The second I noticed it missing my blood surged with panic. I began feverishly roving my eyes around the apartment. As I searched through the melee of my halfway-unpacked home, the instinct of survival known as flight or flight took over. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. Each purposeful step of my foot splashed puddles of trepidation in my wake. "Where is my laundry card?"  I cried in a panic. While retracing my steps back to the laundry room, my mind raced with thoughts of the consequences of my negligence. I had $5 on that card, and it’ll take another $5 to replace the card itself. Why don’t I just take a $10 bill and throw it out the window, or set it on fire for my own amusement? How could I be so careless? Do you know how many things can go wrong when a person’s not paying attention? I can’t afford to be so frivolous! And then I got a grip. I took five deep breaths and forced myself to stop anxiously looking everywhere the eye could see. After about five more minutes o...

I don't know how to pick up the pieces of my life and start over. All I know is I'm crying every day. Feeling hopeless, lost, and so much anger I can't even see straight. There's so much to do I don't know where to start. We're out of toothpaste, for crying out loud, but have I gone to the store to get more? I'm over halfway done writing a book I can't fathom finishing because my head is such a jumble of chaos. Exercising, juicing, pacing, releasing stress and embracing the positive, those all seem like relics from another lifetime, another person's life. I worked so hard to create an existence for myself in Arizona I could be successful at. Now I live in a place where it's too expensive for me to not work, I have a bevy of rekindled personal relationships to disappoint, and everything I try to do makes me feel like a colossal failure. Boy, I really need to go watch that Transformation  documentary on Werner Erhard that changed my life last summe...

Los Angeles is beating the proverbial crap out of me. I’ve only been here two weeks, but so many darn things keep going wrong I’m sliding right back into survival mode. The one where at any given moment I’m prepared for an anvil to drop from the sky onto my head, semi-truck to careen into me from nowhere, and something as random as two strokes to strike my brain. It’s exhausting, living in a constant state of disaster preparedness. If things don’t start turning around quickly I’m not sure the town I’m from will allow me to continue. Over the years I wondered why I grew-up to be such a cynical, surly, hotheaded broad. Well I’m not wondering anymore! Simply surviving the insane drivers and aggressive, self-absorbed people I encounter at every turn is enough to make a girl want to crawl on her hands and knees back to the sweltering desert I just deserted. Or at the very least revert to my previous state of being known as ‘total bitch’. I’m damaged goods. There aren’t enough pep-talks ins...

Last week when I found myself sitting on my kitchen floor organizing my cleaning products to avoid doing it, I realized I have a pretty serious problem. Given my poor housekeeping skills the last thing I care about is how Comet and Draino hang-out under my sink. But the thought of doing what I was blatantly avoiding filled me with dread. As I shoved the box of cleaners under the sink I knew the moment was upon me. My heart started pounding and sweat broke out on my forehead. When I walked over to my computer I felt dizzy and nauseous. Intense doom invaded every cell of my body. The certainty of total global annihilation made me want to fling myself off my balcony to avoid such an ugly demise. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. After enduring the financial devastation of five years of Fibro, followed by four years of not working, this is what happens when I try to pay the bills. With a sinking heart I realized I was dealing with a physiological response to an emotional reaction...