Tag Archives: balance

Jenga: Life Edition

Posted on by
4

1/4/11     3:24am

I keep thinking “I feel like I’m going crazy.” I know it’s a thought. I’m experiencing crazy.

Last night I slept in a chair in my living room. By 4am, several hours into an SVU marathon, I was so confused. I felt my eyes melt and roll down my face and was convinced the computer chair in the kitchen was going to kill me. It was safer just to sleep. I went to group tonight. I did pretty well except for not being aware enough of the people around me, which is something I’m usually good at. I expect decompensation in the winter and summer but I’m not sure how to combat it. Jenga explains everything.

If you’ve ever played Jenga you know there are 3 blocks at the base of that skinny tower holding everything up. The object of the game is to remove as many pieces as possible placing them on top to make it taller. Each of the other levels starts with 3 pieces too but the foundation is the most important. For me those blocks are Music, Safety/Food/Sleep, and Therapy.


If I don’t have the safety piece, music and therapy can still hold me up. But if music and therapy/support are out and it all rests on food & sleep, anything can topple the tower.

Right now the whole thing is teetering. I’m on the edge looking down. Don’t take that piece! But it’s scheduled to be taken the 19th, like wisdom teeth. And I don’t know what to do.

The blocks higher up in Jenga: Life Edition don’t seem equally as strong as the wooden ones.

(click)…

© Michelle Routhieaux 2011

Just One

Posted on by
Reply

12-21-10    3:01am

People don’t get it. It just takes one. One tiny thing to change my mood. A look, a thought, a smell, a word, a song. Just one.

I work really hard to maintain my sanity, to balance all the people and memories and places, to refute the distortions, to pick out what’s real from what’s not. It’s like walking backwards on a tight rope 100 feet in the sky blindfolded during Santa Annas in the desert over a pit of hungry tigers and fire. Most days I do okay. But it just takes one thing.

Today was very stressful. I made it through my group and my meeting, enjoyed dinner with a friend, worked on the Thursday Poets Rally. And I had found a bit of peace. The sound of the rain. The feel of my breath. And there it appears – a Facebook message that reads, “Thanx for nothing!” Really? Do you have to be such a bitch? I can’t control the fact that you have no tact but I also can’t control how you make me feel. I can attempt to use logic to change that feeling, but I can’t change the seething anger in my soul. You take perverse delight in waking the colicky child I had finally calmed for the night. Just because you can! And for what reason? (Don’t reach) It’s all about you.

People don’t think. Most people I interact with don’t take the time to wonder how what they say will affect the next person. They don’t care if I’m teetering on the edge. Not their problem. I might be able to handle just one. But they’re everywhere.

I want to move away, get a new phone number, change my email and my FB, and my blog. I can’t take it anymore. People are making me crazy. I am too tired to put up with their shit. It’s too much.

© Michelle Routhieaux 2010