I AM

SHRINKING..

Every so often I go into "cave mode".

I leave my house only for work and grocery shopping. I stop answering the phone except calls from my family or close friends. I sleep way too much on my days off and can't get any sleep on the days when I have to work. My world shrinks down to something safe and semi-controllable.

It is at once comforting and uncomfortable. I am all alone with myself. I can play my lappy toppy for hours or read cheesy romance novels or watch tivo. I can eat weird food that I made up and watch Keeping Up With The kardashians marathons. All the things that I might not do if I was out having a life.

But... I am all alone with myself. Scenes from past breakups play in my head. Fights with my parents or friends, secrets I've kept, lies I've told keep me up at night even if they are years or decades old. I am restless and oversensitive. I cry for no reason and every reason. I don't clean up my room and it starts to look as cluttered as I feel.

Then, slowly, things start to turn around. I start feeling better. I clean. I forgive myself. I laugh again instead of just pretending. I play netball every weekend..and now there's a netball practice every Tuesday and Thursday after work, which is very good.

I realize that this may not be 'normal'. I know that part of it is a reaction to how cut off I am here in Lbn - from family and friends. But part of it is the darkness that I have always carried with me and that I sometimes tired of fighting.

This is the first time that I can remember trying to fight the urge to burrow. To shrink my world down into my little cave and stay there. I'm making vague plans to get out and about in the next few days. Little things like washing my car or playing netball. I'm trying to start small.