Hang on...I will in a minute.

Wow. I think about coming here and doing some serious out-loud thinking, and then that's where it stops. Procrastination, my most finely honed skill.

I have put off exercise, diet, education, confrontation, amends....you name it. I can always convince myself that if I wait one more day, I'll really know what to say or I'll have more motivation or energy or whatever. Oh wait, let me just make a cup of tea and then I'll get right on that.

Well, here's the lesson from the last week or so about postponing things you really want to or need to or should do. If you wait long enough......it's too late.

You won't get to have another laugh, another cry, one more hug, say you're sorry or say I love you. You will just have to carry all of those return-to-sender sentiments around with you for ever because it will be too late.

It won't get any easier to do the hard thing and it will feel great when you do the right thing. See, I know all of this, and yet I have delayed making those emotional overtures to the folks that have gotten further away or with whom I have conflict. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. What? She's gone? That's impossible. I wanted to tell her how much I love her.

Sick. And tired.

Not a good combination to aid healthy outlooks or positive self-reflection. My schedule and bad attitude have given me permission to avoid meetings for the last few weeks. I'm feeling like shit, physically as well as spiritually.

Being exhausted and frustrated with demands at work along with picking up some delightful bug along the way have created the fertile ground in which I have been sowing the seeds of fear, suspicion, fatalism and resentment.

What I find interesting, now that I'm actually looking at it from the edge of the cesspool instead of dog-paddling around the middle of it (don't worry, my feet and legs are still dangling in and I'm still covered in it) is that for the first time, I can see just how twisted and myopic my thinking (believing) becomes when I'm not vigilant over my serenity.

I am literally exhausted by my fearful thoughts. And the coughing, that's pretty exhausting too, but my mental state is what's really dragging me down.

I'm going to drink tea on the couch for one complete 24 hour period and then no matter how I feel, I'm going to get to a meeting this weekend. Reading the blogs is nice, but for the first time, while they still give me great insight and a measure of comfort, they are also like a wagging finger...."this isn't enough my dear woman, you need to get out and do YOUR work..." OK. OK. You're right, I do.

I only have a minute.

But I have to get this out into the universe. I saw a blog this morning that said 'relationships were her Kryptonite". I guess that's a pretty unanimous truth, if it's not a romantic relationship it's a family one, or a professional one, or the really big, fat, ugly one....the one with one's self. Mine is a study in such self-protective paranoia that it is an unavoidably detrimental influence on all the rest of them.

My greatest fear of all is that I am not REALLY (you know the way other people are) loved and valued. That I am being used, manipulated and devalued by all of those I am in a relationship with. They all want something from me, and I'm so co-dependent that I also think the only way to show love is to give.

I mean, even when someone very close to me surprises me with a little gift, or flowers, or nice dinner....at first I'm delighted, but then my thinking always takes me down the rabbit hole of wondering what they want, or what they feel guilty about, or............

Yeah, no more needs to be said about that trip to Crazytown. My big triumph this last time was actually NOT turning it into a giant "thing" where I make a lot of ridiculous statements and veiled accusations to get that cheap, fake kind of reassurance that just ends up making me feel worse.

When does the drop actually happen?