MONKEY FOREST

MONKEY 

FOREST               (JOURNAL EXCERPT)

By Kelly Rentzel

JULY 14, 2010

 

I AM AFRAID.  WHAT AM I AFRAID OF?

1) losing my marriage

2) losing Catie

3) losing my job

4) losing my mind

5) losing insurance for all of us

6) being on medication for the rest of my life

7) getting through another day without being interested

8) losing interest in everything

I DO NOT FEEL CAPABLE OR FULFILLED.  I’VE LOST MY “MOJO.”

I have lost my identity…

Every time I feel the anxiety and fear subside, it’s very temporary…I am lost, despairing, withdrawn.  This is the opposite of what I’ve been in the past….

I was so happy.  I know I was.  But work was scaring me.  And the prospect of not working was scaring me…I’m a shell of my former self because I got afraid.  Because I wasn’t sleeping.  I want to go back to what I was, but I don’t know how.

I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW THE QUESTION.

 

I am exhausting Chad [my husband] and everyone around me…Everything I do yields only a temporary solution.  And I keep thinking about all of the mothers who committed suicide: I know there are many.  I can’t do that to Catie or Chad.  I have to slog through.  Death is not an option!  If that is so, then why am I pondering it?  This is just so…weird….

Why didn’t I just turn to alcohol?  It seems strange that I would not have….

I can’t stop the looping in my head.  Nothing I am doing is working….The counselor yesterday told me that I was a catastrophic thinker and that if I failed to change I would end up killing myself. 

BUT I AM AFRAID TO CHANGE AND DON’T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN. 

The job seems like the easiest place to start: I don’t like it, and it’s most unfulfilling.  But then what?

I fear I’m hurting Catie with my behavior now, and that breaks my heart.  When will I be comfortable in my own skin again?  I need help from God.  He is the only one who can save me now.

Snap out of it!  I’m the only person telling me to do that, but I have no concept of how to do that…Rachel the Cutter seemed so bizarre to me.  But her compulsive behavior is really no different from my obsessive thinking.