Change

After an 8-hour work day, I don't look for this to be a very coherent post... you've been warned.

I can't remember, and I'm too lazy to go look up, how the DSM puts it. Something about adherence to non-functional routines, maybe? That's the idea. You following?

Well, to that I say, who's calling the shots? My routines are very functional for me, thank you very much. Without them, I fall apart.

Wake up. Lay upside down in my bed. Devotions and prayers. Look for Elsie. Downstairs. 2 Diet Mt. Dews. TV on. Computer on (check personal email, blog email, look to see if Chloe is online and talk to her if she is, check blog, check personal Facebook, blog Facebook, and message board). Switch cats (everyday, I pick 2 of my remaining 11- Leigh has the 12th- cat figurines to accompany me on my journeys). Then, and only then, the day can start.

So what happens when part of my routine changes?

If my morning routine gets interrupted by a phone call, an unexpected potty break, a mess that needs to be cleaned up, then I can (albeit grumbly) insert the necessary diversion and return to my pattern.

Then there are the more permanent things.

One of my favorite fellow bloggers, a mom, has found that it's time for her to stop blogging. I've learned so much about myself through her child. Honestly, I feel like a friend has walked out or maybe as if someone has died. I'm just not ready for it to be over, gone, no more.

Everyone is saying how they're proud and excited that she is following her own path and listened to herself that she needed to stop. I have a heck of a time with things like that. I can't get past how it affects me to process how it's affecting someone else. I can only see the situation my way. Even when I realize I'm being selfish, I can't get past it. It's something frustrates me immensely about myself, but I'm stuck.

I'm so sensitive about... okay, point taken... about everything, that this one little alteration to my day is going to set me back quite a bit.

I think I need to get a little less sensitive. Practice (all 22 years of it) has proved futile. I'm still wretched at transitions and change. I do better if things are taken very slowly, but like this time, it's not always practical to do that.

Anyway, I wish that were all that were on my mind, but it's not. I'll spare you the rest for tonight...