TheBanyanTree: Confusion

[Maria Gibson]

I have been so preoccupied sometimes, lately, that there are things and 
chores going to the dogs.  I don't know how to stop it and, to be 
brutally honest, feel a certain defiance not to stop it.  I want it to 
not be a problem to my daily life and yet in those moments of defiance, 
sometimes wish my daily life was gone.  That is harsh.

I have talked a lot about this to a lot of people.  I am loved and 
cherished and have resources and so I hold some things back from these 
people because I wish not to hurt them, I wish not to have to explain 
myself and I wish to do what I feel I need to do without rebuke.  Some 
of my talking has been with people who are paid well to stop and listen 
to me.  They listen and help for the predetermined amount of time and 
then they go away and can't bother me unless I make time for them 
again.  That is damned convenient.

I have not talked much to the person who deserves it most.  I have 
struggled to be, at least on the outside, the person I am supposed to be 
because I may wake up and decide I still want to be her or I may need to 
be her, even in this limited capacity, at some point.  I can't just let 
her go even as she pisses me off because she still has a place.  People 
need her.  People need her to be who she has always been and who she has 
made promises to always be.  A part of me wants for the still sane me to 
lie still and wait, wait until the dust settles and then emerge intact.  
There is a smaller being in me who wishes for her to make so much noise 
that she is outed and then chased away.  I worry that those two pieces 
will change places and the one will become more forceful than the 
other.  That is scary.

I want to keep my cake and to eat it, too.  The duality with which I am 
currently living has some advantages which keep a foot in both worlds.  
Yet, how can either world be served well when the membranes are 
stretched so thin?  How can I be so selfish as to bake a cake all for me 
and then eat it without regard to what others may need or want?  I'm 
leaving crumbs on the floor and callously stepping over them.  I know a 
selfishness has taken over but even as I struggle not to give in, I 
create scenarios which will propagate the continued course I have 
deliberately set upon.  That is not fair.

I know I will make it to the other side, I'm just uncertain as to what 
is there.  I am uncertain about what I want to be there waiting for me.  
I am sometimes afraid of what I want and need.  I am afraid that what I 
want and need will ruin what I have cherished for the first half of my 
life.  I am afraid that I will let the status quo continue ad nauseam.  
I am simply afraid.

All of that is the truth.

Maria