(no subject)

It's days like today that make me understand why we have some of the stranger psychological disorders such as the fugue state. For those who haven't taken Abnormal Psychology, occasionally people have been known to leave their home and essentially disappear, only to be found months, years or sometimes decades later living under an assumed name, in a new place, with a new job and sometimes a new spouse. Most of the time these people have no memory of their former life; but once in a while they snap out of it sometime afterward, and find themselves with an entire new set of responsibilities, and (of course) no clue as to what's happened to the friends, family members, debts, and other responsibilities they left behind in their old life...

(I can just imagine the "Oh, shit..." factor there.)

It's times like this when I can understand why someone with a perfectly decent life might suddenly disappear. It's not any one thing, usually - most people who go into a fugue state haven't suffered anything dramatic like abuse - but sometimes the combination of various elements in your life start to really weigh down on you. And when this is combined with a predisposition for emotional instability, one's mind might plausibly decide that it's time to hit the reset button and start over.

As this applies to my life right now...I'm feeling very lucky that, while I have something of a disposition toward emotional instability, I'm usually good at levelling myself out. But sometimes I don't manage as well as I'd like to. This morning, for instance, I was actually in a fairly good mood. But a few things happened this afternoon (more on that in a minute) and all of a sudden I felt like curling up into a ball and crying. I'm feeling a little more even at the moment, but I wish that I had some way of either predicting when these things would happen, or controlling them. Unfortunately, it's their very transitory nature that makes them both so annoying and so hard to predict or to control.

As to specifics...there's one part that I'm not going to get into, if only because it affected me in an amount disproportionate to the actual event, which really shouldn't even matter. Another part, however, was kind of uncool - apparently there's a big scratch on the side of Cha's husband's(?) van, which I was parking next to the entire time I stayed with her. While it's a pretty tight parking space, and I admit that I may have nudged his van once or twice, I'm fairly certain I never scratched it, especially not in the length and depth that she described - and if I had, I certainly would have heard some sort of grinding sound. Fortunately, there're no scratches on the side of the Baroness, which is a mark in my favor, though she seems to think that it might have been the side mirror...I just have this sinking feeling that I'm going to end up paying for it, whether or not I'm actually responsible. Which, given the financial situation Ryan and I are currently in (car repairs aren't cheap), is not a happy thing.

Though to tell the truth, I think what's bothering me more than possible additional financial burden is the fact that she'd think that I'd do something like that and not tell her about it...yes, I am human, but I try to make some effort at honesty, and if I'd scratched David's van that seriously I certainly would've told her and offered to make some recompense.

There isn't really much else that is actively stressing me at the moment; most of the rest of the reasons I was so depressed had to do with the usual feelings of worthlessness that come at such times. While I know that some of them are irrational, I sometimes wonder if I'm a bit too cavalier about my life in general, and especially the hurt that I cause others.

@->--Rose

(no subject)

It's days like today that make me understand why we have some of the stranger psychological disorders such as the fugue state. For those who haven't taken Abnormal Psychology, occasionally people have been known to leave their home and essentially disappear, only to be found months, years or sometimes decades later living under an assumed name, in a new place, with a new job and sometimes a new spouse. Most of the time these people have no memory of their former life; but once in a while they snap out of it sometime afterward, and find themselves with an entire new set of responsibilities, and (of course) no clue as to what's happened to the friends, family members, debts, and other responsibilities they left behind in their old life...

(I can just imagine the "Oh, shit..." factor there.)

It's times like this when I can understand why someone with a perfectly decent life might suddenly disappear. It's not any one thing, usually - most people who go into a fugue state haven't suffered anything dramatic like abuse - but sometimes the combination of various elements in your life start to really weigh down on you. And when this is combined with a predisposition for emotional instability, one's mind might plausibly decide that it's time to hit the reset button and start over.

As this applies to my life right now...I'm feeling very lucky that, while I have something of a disposition toward emotional instability, I'm usually good at levelling myself out. But sometimes I don't manage as well as I'd like to. This morning, for instance, I was actually in a fairly good mood. But a few things happened this afternoon (more on that in a minute) and all of a sudden I felt like curling up into a ball and crying. I'm feeling a little more even at the moment, but I wish that I had some way of either predicting when these things would happen, or controlling them. Unfortunately, it's their very transitory nature that makes them both so annoying and so hard to predict or to control.

As to specifics...there's one part that I'm not going to get into, if only because it affected me in an amount disproportionate to the actual event, which really shouldn't even matter. Another part, however, was kind of uncool - apparently there's a big scratch on the side of Cha's husband's(?) van, which I was parking next to the entire time I stayed with her. While it's a pretty tight parking space, and I admit that I may have nudged his van once or twice, I'm fairly certain I never scratched it, especially not in the length and depth that she described - and if I had, I certainly would have heard some sort of grinding sound. Fortunately, there're no scratches on the side of the Baroness, which is a mark in my favor, though she seems to think that it might have been the side mirror...I just have this sinking feeling that I'm going to end up paying for it, whether or not I'm actually responsible. Which, given the financial situation Ryan and I are currently in (car repairs aren't cheap), is not a happy thing.

Though to tell the truth, I think what's bothering me more than possible additional financial burden is the fact that she'd think that I'd do something like that and not tell her about it...yes, I am human, but I try to make some effort at honesty, and if I'd scratched David's van that seriously I certainly would've told her and offered to make some recompense.

There isn't really much else that is actively stressing me at the moment; most of the rest of the reasons I was so depressed had to do with the usual feelings of worthlessness that come at such times. While I know that some of them are irrational, I sometimes wonder if I'm a bit too cavalier about my life in general, and especially the hurt that I cause others.

@->--Rose