Last night my husband worked on the lawnmower. He spent half an hour but couldn't get it fixed. So as I dreamed last night, I dreamed about mowing the lawn. It was so satisfying. I pushed it back and forth across my family's property and watched the grass all become even and trim. I was so happy and felt so accomplished-like I had finaaly gotton something right. I woke up at five and couldn't sleep anymore.

Yesterday sucked at work. It was pointed out that my efforts were not quite up to par. It was on something very minute but it really reinforced the fact that I am a failure at most things. All the right ingredients, just not added in the right order I guess. Thus the lawnmower dream. I have retreated into a fantasy world till it comes time to leave this job later this year, so I don't get terribly depressed about not really cutting it. I sort of daydream and work, and think about religion and life and all the stuff that seems more important than the job. You know you just keep telling yourself it doesn't matter till you convince yourself of it. It was wierd because for a bit I could feel. I actually had emotions.

So much of the time in my life has been spent behind some sort of wall. I can see what happens there but I can't really feel what happens. I don't feel joy, hope or sadness, just bland detachment. It is easy to be analytical that way and make choices that aren't influenced by emotion, when you don't feel emotions. The rest of my family is "crazy" because they can't make choices without impulsive emotions intruding. I am the opposite I guess. I guess in the past two years-since they told me I have ADHD-I have forgiven myself for fucking up so much stuff-I started to feel things. I feel joy and peace and I sit in the sun and feel it bask my body. I was reveling in emotion, sensuality, pain, pleasure, all of it because it seemed like I could feel. Granted perhaps a touch of hypomania, but still it was feeling.

Yesterday when I was -well-very mildly reprimanded-it was like my whole system shut down-somebody threw a breaker and shut off all emotional circuitry. I acknowledged what needed to be done and then left in a state of mild shock. I have this lump of nothing that clogs up my gut and makes me a bit bitter. I can feel the "depression cliff" lurking somewhere under foot, just out of site. If I step the wrong way, it is a deep deep plunge. Sometimes , before when I couldn't feel, it would be there and my foot would slip off the edge and make me stumble. It was the worst type of agony.

I think when normal people get depressed it is a mild lurch into melencholy. A friend told me that her dad was an alcoholic-for no reason- a couple of times a year-he would stop by a liquor store on his way home and drink an entire bottle of vodka. They would find him there passed out in his car. I tried to explain to her what I feel-it isn't a mild progression to sadder and sadder states-it is a plunge into despair-one moment everything seems okay, then you crash into catastrophy. It's the depression cliff, just waiting. We are the ones who go nuts one day and kill ourselves. (Don't worry-I'd never do that-got the dumpling to care for-family responsibilities keep me in line) In her dad's case , he snaps and gets drunk. I did this some when I was a teen.

In any case i can feel it under my feet, but I am being careful to step around it as I can't fall in there right now. I guess that is why i can't feel. It's better not to feel if it let's me walk around the edge of the cliff and not fall over. I will miss feeling though.