Into the Void

I worked late Thursday night because I’ve been having trouble getting there on time. Typically I leave at around 8, and it’s a 45 minute drive home.

I’ve been in that place where… well, it’s as if I need to stop and let my mind catch its breath, if that makes sense. Instead, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and trudging onward in this death march we call life.

Of course, my mind is taking this opportunity to slap me around. Self-defeating thoughts like:
I’m a fraud, I’m only pretending to be an engineer.
Everything I’ve ever done was stupid
or hurtful
or self-destructive.
My husband only stays with me because he made a promise to my mother to take care of me when she was on her deathbed. (Nice dramatic touch.)
Creationists don’t want their children to be more successful than they are, because that would support the theory of evolution.
Pro-lifers love rapists almost as much as they hate women.
Millennialists are working on bringing about a utopian, agrarian 1000-year peace through war in the Middle East, and are too unsophisticated to understand that a 1000-year global interregnum doesn’t equal peace, it equals The Dark Ages.
Evangelicals want to kill non-believers just as desperately as the Wahabbist Islamics want to.

I mean, rationally I know it’s all BS, but that’s how I FEEL. As long as I don’t let it suck me in intellectually too I’ll be fine.

But let me clarify, That’s what my neurotransmitters are trying to do to me. *I’m* ok. It’s the bipolar talking, it’s pessimism.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Well, that’s the point of going to support groups, right? To learn how to move forward even when we don’t care about any of it. We don’t have to get sucked in. It’s about having a rational, objective observer. Yes, so I have a shitload of training in how to be logical and objective.

:roll:

I wish everybody took four years of science and five years of math in high school. It’s a good start. It teaches you how to think and how to form conclusions. If you let it, it also teaches you how to be objective.

Eh, well, I can still feel it and the thoughts are there when I’m not thinking about anything else.

On Thursday I told the boss I’d be taking a mental health day Friday. Cranked out the first version of Friday’s work and tested it on the hardware. Updated a test document. RARed the whole mess, dropped it into my shared docs for review. Sent the boss an email with a 9:30PM timestamp so he knows when I left. Heaved a sigh of relief and headed home.

I was in an accident on the way home. I was on the turnpike about a mile from my exit. There’s construction near the exit and some fellow came flying down and rear-ended me.

I’m ok, got the wind knocked out of me by the impact and breathed in some Hybrid nastiness. Contusions on my chest and abdomen from the seat belt, nausea, vertigo, and a neck sprain, but nothing life-threatening.

I suspect that my car is a total loss. It’s a classic Prius. The rear was crushed in so deep it cut through the tire and jammed the wheels. The auxiliary battery was crushed and exuding a visible a cloud of acid. Fortunately most of that got sucked into his car, not mine. The Prius avenges its own death. I don’t know how the hybrid battery fared. It may have taken out a cell or so on the left side.

Standing in a construction zone on the turnpike at 10:15PM with all the sirens and flashing lights and cars flying by just a few feet away was the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I had to hang onto the concrete barrier to keep myself from running away.

I was looking for an excuse to buy a new car. Maybe a Toyota Matrix. I playing around online this morning comparing prices.

Mishaps are like knives. They can cut you or they can serve you depending upon whether you grab them by the blade or by the handle.