Another Metaphor and a Breakdown in Retrospect

I am a selfish, needy person who plays mind games and might be incredibly psychotic.

I do this thing where I'll devote myself entirely to a cause/class/person/idea out of nowhere and get so involved it gets in the way of the rest of my life, but then everything comes crashing down around me and I have no idea how to cope and I go absolutely berserk inside my head trying to figure out how I messed it all up (because it was obviously something I did my selfish little self) because I'm incredibly psychotic (and see the whole world teaming up with itself to point out all my faults) and needy to the point of breaking everything I try to hold on to tight enough it can't get lost (because I'm needy and can't survive without whatever my project is at any given time) because I'm psychotic and codependent and not quite yet a functioning human being.

BUT! I'm (working on) getting there.

ANYwho, I got into a bit of a tiff this week after saying "This is where I'm at, let me know when you're done with what you're doing so I can see you then" and apparently ruining an otherwise good evening in the process.

I will not deny that sometimes I just can't wait to come home and go inside so I can strip down to pajamas and crawl into bed and use my person-of-interest as my teddy-bear-slash-personal-heater, but what actually happened in this most recent incident was I got told the entire contents of the first paragraph of this blog and unceremoniously ditched in favor of video games, resulting in the worst bout of depressive insomnia I've had since the Fall of '08.

I never want to ruin everybody's evening. I don't want to be any one person's cause for living; that's a lot of pressure and, quite frankly, I don't want it. I would rather be someone's candy on the pillow in the nice hotel room that is life. Things are good, great even, but then, Look! Something extra which just makes everything that much better!

(Please ignore any thoughts of me as pillow-candy you may have had while reading the previous paragraph.)

I'm not feeling like that something extra. I'm also not entirely sure I'd recognize what that would be like if I experienced it, you know? I feel like a picture you put up to cover a hole in the wall. Or sometimes the hole. Or sometimes your fist going through the wall in the first place, resulting in the hole and necessitating the picture because actually fixing the wall would mean having to admit you put your fist through it.

(Please ignore any references to fisting you may have inferred from the previous paragraph.)

In five minutes, I go from snuggling for warmth like my life depended on it to sitting alone in bed wondering what just happened that inspired so much bitterness.

As I'm hearing about how selfish, needy, and crazy I am, my thought process goes like this:

"What? Why? What did I do? How can I fix it? Why can't I function? But I said what I meant. I didn't want you to leave the party. I just didn't want to still be sleeping in my car when you got home. I just didn't want to stay in there all night and not wake up reasonably well-rested in the morning. If I had known wanting your affection tonight would have ended in this I would have stayed somewhere else. I could have crashed on that couch I was on two hours ago. I could be sitting in a coffee shop with an old friend catching up. I could be with my family. But I told you I wanted to see you tonight. I wanted to wake up to you. How am I crazy? I'm trying not to cling. You ignored me all day yesterday in favor of buying peace of mind. I didn't want to interfere. I didn't want to get in the way. I didn't want to make things awkward or difficult. I don't know what I did. Are you thinking of replacing me? Because I told you not to hurry home. I told you to have fun. I didn't want to spoil things, and said so. How is that playing mind games? How is it not clear enough to say exactly what I want you to do (have fun) but also not right to say the opposite (come home)?"

My mind is moving faster than my mouth and I end up doing this weird stuttering thing where all that's coming out is the question words and I'm not making any sense. I revert to an overly obnoxious and terrible attempt at sarcasm:

"Well, warm me up and we'll see what happens. I'm chilly as hell and I'm going to just go ahead and blame you; not that it's your fault, but, dammit, baby it's cold outside."

PofI gets up to leave the room.

I'm stuck there, alone in the dark, confused as to what happened and what caused it and unable to even process the moment PofI leaves the room. I'm stuck alone in the dark, cold and in shock, wondering how I'm messing things up this time.

I start crying as I try to tell my frozen feet to move, to follow, and get my mind to slow down and send one thought at a time to my mouth so I can have a (hopefully) rational and adult conversation about what both our problems are and how to fix them and, all of a sudden, I can't breathe. I can't think. I can't move. I snap out of it and find a notebook, from which I steal a blank page and start scribbling while I hyperventilate, trying to calm myself down, and by the time I'm done scribbling and able to breathe again the paper is so covered, front and back, with everything I hate about myself that as I read it the panic sets in again and it takes another hour or so to calm myself down.

I leave the room, taking the paper with me, and walk out to the open kitchen/living room area. I look towards the couch and there's PofI, on his computer with his massive headset on, gaming with God knows who and not noticing how badly I'm shaking if he sees me there at all.

I crumble the paper, tear it into thousands of tiny little bits, throw it in the trashcan, and walk back to the bedroom.

A part of me hopes he did notice, and pulled the little pieces of crumbled paper out of the trashcan and pieced them together and read what I was trying to say.

I vaguely remember not being so dysfunctional. I used to scream instead of cry and throw things and hit people and furniture instead of not breathing and scribbling. I wonder which one does me more damage in the long run? The physical venting of mental frustration or the mindless stream of self-deprecation followed by senseless acts of violence against pieces of paper? Am I really more dysfunctional now than I was then? Am I just differently dysfunctional?

Someday, maybe not soon, but someday I will be able to get my head in check without having to break it first. I hate how I feel when I break down like that. Helpless, and hopeless, and angry, scared, alone. And ugly. I hate feeling like my inner ugly bits have risen to the surface. I know so many kind, beautiful people, but when my ugly shows I don't stand a chance at all of not scaring them off.