Chapter 4
Rougher Days Ahead

Odd to some people, but my best friends are my sisters. If anyone deserves the title more it’s the people who have been with you for the longest, and the people who you can never really get rid of. They hang in there like leeches. They are the ones who witnessed me taking off my diaper time and time again to sit butt naked on the kitchen table. They stuck roses down my diapers when I was a baby, they are the ones who still remember your horrid, wrecked, nicknames and use them often. They are the only ones who can call me those names. They remember your real embarrassing moments, the ones that only family are fortunate enough to witness. They are the only ones who can relentlessly tease you and ostracize you, but should anyone that does not have the same DNA flowing through their veins do the same then all hell breaks lose. Sisters are the only ones who will refuse to drive a certain car because when your car got totaled that is what the other person was driving, and it is now labeled the enemy car. Usually they are the only ones who will really tell you if that outfit makes you look bad.
My sisters have been there the longest, they love me no matter what I do, and I am the same with them. Even though they made me play Life, Monopoly, and Barbie’s by myself when we were growing up we turned out being very close.
I guess what I am getting at is today was rough, rougher than the days that I sleep in. I woke up on time and right now there is no worse punishment for me. I’ve been having bad dreams lately, and last night was an overload. I was tired, I could tell that because every time I woke up I fell asleep almost instantaneously. The only connecting factor between all these dreams is the sense of not having control. I can’t really remember last night’s dreams so well now, but I do remember the feeling. I woke up feeling panicked, and well, I don’t particularly care for that feeling. I’ve had other dreams where I am driving and the brakes give out, I use the emergency brake but still nothing, the car continues to speed on and there is nothing that I can do.
It isn’t the dreams that make getting up in the morning so hard, in fact I am usually enthralled in my dreams as though they were some movie and I just have to know what is going to happen next, which is why I go back to sleep after I have woken up. I have this indescribable feeling when I get up in the morning, a feeling that nothing really matters. This feeling sticks with me for hours, sometimes all day as in the case of last Wednesday.
So today I felt like I should call my sister. She’s been down Interstate Crazy before so I figured she could help me. She’s not crazy anymore; in fact she’s married and has the cutest toddler ever calling her ‘mom’. She keeps herself very busy and very happy. So with that said we didn’t really talk about me. She kept apologizing for stealing all the air time but I told her that I just liked to listen to her talk, which I do. It’s very comforting to know someone loves you and to know that someone you love is happy. But despite the fact that I didn’t have a chance to say anything, I almost didn’t want to mention it. I called her because I felt like I was finally ready to tell her how I have been feeling and to ask for some advice. I held up pretty well until we started to say goodbye. I got choked-up and it only lasted for a second but you can’t hide things like that from family. I told her it was because I miss her. Which isn’t a complete lie, I do miss her. I just didn’t add the part where I felt like I was losing my mind. When she was talking I wondered if I got married and had a baby if that would make me happy, it seems to have worked for her. But I don’t think it would. I need a sabbatical, which is why today I decided to check my cash flow. I had felt that if I actually had cash flow then I would leave for the weekend, not tell anyone, just go and come back on Tuesday morning before my counseling appointment. I don’t know why I didn’t go, and thinking about it now I don’t know if it would have even made me feel any better.
To top it all off every time I see my pretend boyfriend he is telling me that I am not happy anymore; I like to call that enabling. It’s like when he told me that I had weak lungs and then I tried to run a 5k that night. All I could think was, “I have weak lungs, no wonder I can’t run uphill like this.” I could have done a lot better on the 5k had I not been told I was weak. So when he tells me that I haven’t been happy lately I feel like it makes the next day so much harder to get through. Every day seems harder than the last.
Random interjection but as I was sitting here wondering if I just leave things like that or keep writing I realized that I stopped breathing and I do that a lot lately. Apparently it’s easier not to breathe when thinking? I could kill myself like that! I should be more careful.