Chihuahua

I'm pretty sure I am working on an ulcer.   This entire week (and it's only Wednesday) I have been fighting back a feeling in the pit of my stomach that feels like what  happens right after you reach the bottom of the first hill on a roller coaster. I am constantly a deadly cocktail of "nervous" and "terrified".   I have not been sleeping.  I have been eating.   Neither of these are good news.

So why am I the human equivalent of a wet Chihuahua right now?  A couple things.   One of them; my propensity to do things which I know are bad for me.   For example, last night I went out with my coworkers and ordered 10 (they only come in 10, 20, or 50) chicken wings from Frickers.  I promised myself I would eat 5 and take the rest home, but instead I plowed through 9 and would have eaten the 10th but I needed to leave something on my plate to keep me from a level of self-loathing hitherto only see by self-flagellaters during the Middle Ages.  

And I don't mean to limit my symbolic self-flagellation merely to my eating habits.   I also continue to, just as I always have, hang out with people and put myself in situations, that cause an unhealthy occurrence of connecting synapses within my brain.  And lately, it's been even more than usual.   I make up my mind, logically weigh pros and cons, and then I end up doing exactly what I had decided was the stupidest possible option.

  I had an ex-boyfriend (ironically, one of these people who was unhealthy for me) who always used to say, "Judge things by their fruit."  Which I think is actually a good way to cut to the quick of an issue.   Do I feel better or worse when I hang out with this person?  Does this make me happy?  There is no room for justification or excuses in this approach, it's a yes or no question.

For instance, I had a crush on this guy a little bit back, like I doodle his name into my notebook kind of crush.  I thought he might have had a crush on me, but really, he never reciprocated and allotted me only borrowed scraps of his time.  Instead of thinking, "Ok, this isn't going anywhere, and it makes me feel like shit to know I'm so low on his list of priorities,"  I redoubled my efforts, hoping that sometime soon, he would come to his senses and realize I was the cat's pajamas.  Guess what?  That never happened.   Occasionally, I will get together with him, even now, and I lie to myself and say, "I just want to catch up," or "I want to show him how accomplished and okay I am without him," but the real reason (somewhat to my shame) is that I still am hoping he will come to his senses.  Guess how that's working out?  And instead, I feel lame and stupid and pathetic, not accomplished or okay. 

It always puzzles me how other people seem to have their shit together, and I am such a sensitive, crumbly, dysfunctional mess.   And people think I'm intimidating?   Not so much lately.