It’s some crazy a.m. hour in the middle of the night and my supper won’t be out of the oven for about another 1/2 hour. I couldn’t begin to tell you who I really am, since I’m rolodexing so fast that by the time I wrote my name I would have switched to someone else. In case it hasn’t previously been explained, rolodexing is a term created by the many of me to describe the experience of extremely rapid switching. For those of you old enough to remember what a Rolodex file is, imagine someone just spinning a Rolodex file, flipping one name/address file after another in rapid succession. That’s what comes closest to describing what it’s like when we switch so fast that we can’t keep up with ourself. Rollodexing is a self-protective mode that has a somewhat numbing effect on us making it possible to function (believe it or not – this is a significant improvement over what we would be like if we weren’t rollodexing).

Earlier tonight our Beloved handed us a letter we got in the mail today from one of his/our relatives. It had some very distressing and highly triggering news in it which has us far too distressed to attempt sleep. The heat has been just about unbearable…again; so chances are we wouldn’t be all too inclined to attempt rest anyway; but really “distressed” is too mild a word to adequately describe our current state. Approaching dangerous might come closer. The letter has us battling images from the past and harmful impulses from here and  now. Either one alone can be quite challenging to keep under control; but right now as I type and switch I am bombarded by an on slot of both at the same time. If I weren’t so exhausted from heat + many tears, I’m not sure I would be able to keep typing.

Goodness! I sound so melodramatic! It would be nice to honestly confess exaggeration right now… oh well. Life will go on. Life must go on. We will go on. We will. Yes, we will. Although daunted, we are determined. We will not be the source of piercing pain to our loved ones – not our loved ones emotionally or ourself physically. We refuse. We must refuse. To this we cling. It’s how we get through. We cling for this moment, trusting that when this moment is past, another will come with the same challenge. The fact that we succeeded in the moment just past gives courage to hope and trust that the next moment will conclude with the same result. And on and on we go from one moment to the next to the next until gradually the rollodexing can slow down and we can face remotely longer moments at a time. Sometimes this is all that stands between us and disaster. Tonight we feel very fragile – yes, very fragile indeed. One breath, than another.

Enough moments have gone that our supper has finished cooking and we have consumed it. Now the physical pain is demanding our attention. Though we really don’t like resorting to medication, tonight we will. It is there so that we can choose to use it when it’s needed. Tonight it is needed.