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i often think i am mad or insane or just plain crazy. i've thought this often since i was a child but try not to make it something outwardly noticable. mostly it just invades my quiet thoughts. i never was what i would consider a normal child. i didn't play well with others. i never had the social skills to play the silly games well. still don't. i found myself with odd thoughts at inconvenient times. sometimes i still do.

therapy a few years ago turned out to be a bust. i had a nervous breakdown, for lack of a better term. in going to therapy i found the therapist had more problems than i had that she hadn't dealt with and i spent all my time feeling i was the therapist.

due to many issues in my past, i had feelings of severe depression and thought i needed to get away from my family - to be on my own, something i'd never done. a certain well-meaning therapist told me not to tell my spouse where i was, only that i was safe. this, in turn, drove him nearly over the edge. i also had well-meaning friends (i use the expression loosely) who told him to make me an ultimatum. either tell him where i was or cut me free. i can't say that we are friends any longer.

love managed to win out. i let him come to me and save me from myself. we are closer than ever. he is a remarkable man.

i found out many years after this incident in our lives that my brother-in-law who i'd met my husband through and who i'd always championed and whose side i'd always been on held a frank discussion one night with my husband. it came out that he never liked me after that happened and he'd just been trying to be nice to me for my husbands' sake. bite me. i don't need that kind of support.

i've always said to my husband when we hear about friends getting divorced or similar situations... you never really know what is going on in the relationship unless you are the one in the relationship. everyone lies. everyone wants to sound like the good guy so you will get whatever version of what has happened through their spin machine. so many people thought at that time that i was having and affair and was leaving my husband. that was the furthest thing from my mind. i needed my husband desperately. it was only the bad advice we were getting from, i repeat, well-meaning friends and therapists that kept us from finding the help we needed - which was each other.

sometimes you just have to trust your instincts. and love. never forget the love.

i'm not fully 'cured'. i still have dark thoughts. that is why i decided to put this blog out here. although i am a happy, well-adjusted, loved, smart, attractive woman... i can still have the dark madness. this is my way of coping.