death grip on my sanity

I have always been terrified that I'd go crazy. Thinking back to those fears I had when I was a kid, I'm not quite sure what that meant to me, but it was a sense of losing myself, losing control, losing my grip, my way, my point of view, my mind. There's plenty of mental illness in my family, some profound, some minor. And yet, it was another thing not properly explained or discussed. "She's just crazy," I'd hear about a relative and someone's torment and struggle was minimized.

And so, to this day, I hold onto my sanity so tightly no wonder it finally battling back.

It needs a break.

I need a break.

I need to accept that I'm ok and that I can't control everything the way I want to.

In fact, I can't control anything.

So much of my life has been about other people's chaos. Illness around me when I was little. Divorce. Discord. I lost more than a decade to anorexia, desperately trying to control what I could.

How horrifying, sad, tragic that I found comfort in starving myself. I was very good at it and, looking back, I think that particular brand of insanity held me together when I couldn't cope with all that was going on around me. Wow. I never thought of it that way before. Anorexia as my savior.

But now, those old behaviors don't work. I don't have a way of sticking my head in the sand anymore, of obsessing about something to the exclusion of all else to keep from getting lost in the pain. So, I have to deal.

I don't want to. I don't know how to. And so anxiety reared it's head and kept me from coping.

My life is still full of pain, of drama, of illness.

It's also filled with love, family, creativity, support.

My job is to learn how to balance the two and have faith that I can handle it all.

Deep down, I know I can.

But most of me hasn't accepted that yet.