Treading Water

For weeks now, I have been treading water - emotionally speaking, of course. Suddenly, I'm learning that you can't keep yourself "barely afloat" for an extended amount of time. For some damn reason, eventually you either have to sink or swim. And I assure you, I am sinking very fast. Not only am I sinking, but I am pulling myself down.

Now I have to figure out how to get back to the surface and break free of the waves. Unfortunately, everytime I think I see a shimmer of sunlight above me, I quickly open my mouth and intake more water. How does a cycle like this come to an end? Why am I using so many stupid water references? Is it weird that I suddenly have to pee?

Anyway, I seriously am my own worst enemy these days and it has gone from making things bad to possibly ending a great friendship that neither myself or my friend wants to end. And the more strained our relationship becomes, the more stressed out and psychotic I get. Which in turn leads to my stress causing even more problems in the friendship. I think one of the issues that is having the biggest impact is that I'm a natural-born "wise-cracking" smartass with a dry sense of humor. Have you ever seen those Maxine cartoons? Yep, that's the type of smartass comments I always make. Combine that with the fact that when I feel stress I decide to make a joke out of everything and you can see how that would not make another person feel good.

What I can't figure out is how to relieve my stress. The shift I have to work at my job is what started my spiraling downhill, but I can't change that. My living arrangements currently suck but there's no easy or immediate way to change those. The rest of it all revolves around my best friends and favorite people in the world and there's NO WAY I'm going to change them. Yet, therein lies the problem. Because if I don't change something and figure out how to be my old, normal self instead of a moody, weeping, sometimes raging, always cynical lunatic then my friends are going to decide they don't need to see me anymore.

One thing that might help the entire situation is for me to hire some big, ugly goon to follow me around everywhere and beat me about the neck and shoulders everytime I open my mouth to speak. I say that because I really think that if I would just smile and nod instead of spouting off my "funny" garbage that no one else is amused by, then my friendship wouldn't be as close to the breaking point as you can get. However, I have asked all of the big, ugly goons that I know and they don't like my work schedule either, so they have all refused the job.

So, I guess all that's left to do is to seek professional help. Which is something I swore I'd never do and actually still don't want to do. But, it has been suggested to me strongly several times and what I WILL do is ANYTHING that may fix this before it's too late. If that means I need to do something that I have no desire in the world to EVER do - then I will do it. GLADLY. And I hope that it's not too late.