I feel on one hand like my life as I have known it until now is completely falling apart; I am numbed out on tranquilizers and sleeping pills, wandering through these moments in a daze, yet completely aware of the indefinite fluttering hiding below the surface.

When the tranquilizer level lowers in my bloodstream, I feel as if I'm going to die. I am pushed around by the clenched fists of panic attacks, and the fierce grip of an underlying anxiety -- so intense that I cannot swallow for the lump in my throat; so intense that everything I eat pummels into the knot in my gut and comes back up my throat in a wave of nausea.

I keep telling myself that things will not always be like this; I try to approach this with the attitude of embracing the way that I think and feel; I try to believe the best in myself and in my family, and not surrender to the fear. I can only convince myself for so long, and then the darkness seeps through and swallows up the light, and I am left standing in this black place.

Hubby and I were talking about the colour of our hair when we were children. The bit has a beautiful golden red sheen to her head, and it looks nothing like our adult hair, which is brown and reddish brown, respectively.

"I had very golden red hair when I was a d--" I stopped suddenly.

"a what?" hubby responded.

My eyes filled with tears. "I started to say when I was a doll," I replied.

He was respectfully silent for a moment, "wow."

The insanity is that it keeps coming up. Whether it emerges through my other selves, or whether it manifests as body memories reacting to the time of year, my childhood keeps reproducing itself in my present. I find myself being very quiet (so they won't find me), very attentive and tense (so they can't surprise me), and very braced (so the blows won't knock me over). It goes on in my head, though I try to force it to these back, dusty corners, it opens up a technicolour movie screen and I am forced to watch and participate in this grisly remembrance.

I have to believe that it's going to get better; I have to believe that there is redemption in the midst of this pain. I have to believe that this little girl curled up in my lap, sleeping and slightly snoring, will continue to teach me more about endurance and safety. I have to believe that through learning how to love her, I learn absolutely how to love. I have to believe that her trust in me will help me to know absolutely that I am trustworthy.

Until then, I stumble around in these places, trying to put the jigsaw puzzle together without the picture, and hoping that these pieces of my life interlock, after all.

I am obsessed with it. I worry how I appear to people; I worry that somebody will tramp on my feelings and walk away; I worry that I will force people to say mean, nasty things about me and then turn in and devour myself in my frustration and disappointment.

Whether it appears so or not, I care (I care far too much) about my image. I care far too much about my reputation. I have an ego that is too big to take a lot of assault -- and nearly everything in my life that enrages me comes down to my arrogance; nearly everything in my life comes down to a feeling that I am superior to whoever pissed me off, or said something that damaged me in my vulnerable places.

It is such a crock of shit.

It is such a difficult way to live; always watching the reactions of others, noticing every single twitch of the mouth; every single blink of the eye -- carefully constructing my life to please everyone and make everyone feel good.

For most of my life, I was convinced that I was responsible for people's happiness. My father told me I was responsible for the sunshine (If I was a bad girl, it was cloudy and it rained  "even the sun doesn't want to look at you"; if I was a good girl, it was warm and sunny); I became the person who dictated the contentment of those around me.

It was far too much power for a 6 year old girl, a 7 year old girl, a high schooler, a college student, a 30 year old woman. It is far too much pure ego -- thinking that the universe revolves around me to such an extent -- thinking that I am so important in the great scheme of things as to determine the emotional stability of those I come in contact with.

Jumble that in with the feelings of complete inferiority ("you are a bad girl; nobody will ever love you"), and you've got one fucked up child/teen/adult. You've got somebody who can't decide if she's worthless and horrible, or if she's  all that, and then some.

So I waver on these issues, and I lose myself in the middle of all of the efforts to be who I'm supposed to be; to not talk about the things that cause distress; to give a good blow job; to foresee what people need and then provide it, as if it was who I was all along.

I don't know how to get to the point where I don't care, and maybe that's something I will work on the rest of my life. But I'd like to smash this egotistical view I've got that somehow I'm needed in order for everything to keep functioning (you know gravity, physics, the quadratic equation, basic stuff), and just be a normal person who can feel whatever she needs to feel without upsetting Yugoslavia.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but somewhere inside of me I've had this conviction that I caused the Kosovo crisis. Somewhere inside of me I've thought that my [whatever] caused this war, and that only my [whatever] can fix it.

This isn't a conscious awareness or a psychotic symptom (well maybe it is a psychotic symptom, but I don't truly believe it with my logic; it's more of an emotional belief, that's why I called it a conviction rather than a thought), it's just this way of looking at myself and the world.

This would explain why I go to pieces when I read/hear/see the conflict. This would explain why I am so angry at the things I can't control.

I am so tired of carrying so much around on my shoulders, but I have no idea how to begin to put it down. I have no idea of how to remedy a lifetime of feeling responsible. It is my hope that by making it public, I've acknowledged it to the point of a greater awareness of it.