I�m just thisclose to tears today. Been this way since I woke up and I can�t think why. Everything in the world is too large and too frightening and sometimes I can�t catch my breath and I dare not tell anyone how horrifying this whole enterprise can be. I don�t want anyone to know, after all.

It�s amazing what can knock me down sometimes. For god sake, there�s nothing here to this. I listened to a story about a boy who set himself on fire. I walked up to the rose garden to eat my lunch and felt as if it were all I could do not to fall into the great precipice. What great precipice? I�m running all over trying to get this stupid thing taken care (bookplates dreamed up by the office of getting more money from students� parents with no thought, of course, to the how of the matter. Which, apparently, is stupidly my job even though I have absolutely nothing to do with any part of this process. I�m just running around telling people what they have to do and still, every couple of days, somebody comes up to me thinking that I�m doing the bookplates. I�M NOT DOING THE BOOKPLATES MOTHERFUCKERS.) I keep thinking, every time someone wants to talk to me, that I�m about to get into big trouble. Like I�ve done something very wrong and I�m just waiting for the ones in charge to realize. What have I done? I can't think.

For weeks I�ve been treading in this pool of anxiety, trying to stay up bobbling my head and faking it. I fake it with everyone because to NOT fake it means falling completely to pieces. I can�t have anyone know how much I�m faking because then I cease to be able to do it. I keep thinking that if I can just get to the point where I�m alone and not thinking and with nothing that must be done and no mood then I will be able to get better. Anxiety and panic tend toward depression if I don�t take care. There�s simply too much of the world. Too. Much.

Sometimes I�m afraid to move, that if I were to turn my head I would suddenly be in harm�s way. It�s that scared middle of the night when you�re five years old and you know the monsters are in there but you also know that if you just hold still long enough they will go away feeling. So that�s what I�m doing: holding still.

Why does writing this dreck out make me finally begin to feel better? I hate writing this. Time for some emotional honesty, some diary reclamation, perhaps. It�s not that I haven�t been honest of late, I just haven�t been telling the whole truth. It�s like I haven�t got time for the whole truth anymore. I love my life. I love my old life, too, the one that held so many long hours of just me. Navel gazing at it�s finest, yessir. Gah. It�s not exactly like that is it? (yes. Yes, it is) I know that to admit my panic to acknowledge the malevolent beasties skittering around below the surface breaks some of the tension, allows me some room to breathe. Which, as a matter of fact, I�ve had to remind myself to do lately. I think, as I lay in bed before sleep takes me, breathe just breathe. And I take long gulps of air as I'm drowning and Jeff asks what's wrong and I say, just getting some extra oxygen and then I stop breathing again because I don't want to say what's wrong. I keep holding it in.

I would like to take a vow of silence. Can you stop speaking too? Let's just listen to the cowboy junkies, how about.

Speed River at my feet running low and flat
I'm sitting here burning daylight,
thinking about the past
and that distance out there
where the earth meets the sky
The slightest move and this river mud
pulls me further down
John's at my side,
but he's not noticing that I'm drowning
The slightest move and this river mud
pulls me further down
John's at my side,
but he's not noticing that I'm drowning