Firsts

I'm blogging my first entry of the year.  My first entry on my recently acquired laptop that was a gift from my mom and her husband after I recently installed my first operating system from scratch and it's running fine.  I think this will also be the first time for me to publicly say that I am in relapse.

Relapse means to fall, slip, slide, or blatantly return to old behavior.  My understanding of the first step to getting out of relapse is to admit that you are in relapse.  The second is to ask for help.  I need it.  I find myself in this place where I have completely lost control of my emotions.  Not that I am flying off the handle and hitting walls and screaming, but I definitely have no idea what I am going to feel next.  Life sucks living in the land of confusion.

 My wife told me one day that she thought I was depressed.  I blew her off.  Who wants to admit that?  Or even consider it?  I still don't think she's right, but who knows.  All I know is that I have returned to old ways of coping with stress.  I don't even know what is truly causing me the stress that I can't handle.  Car trouble, job worries and dissatisfaction, feelings of worthlessness, feeling cut off from God, disappointment in myself for my lack of faith, loneliness?  They are all great candidates.  Maybe it's just the fact that for the zillioneth time in my life I am faced with not being good enough.  I thought that I had left my need to be perfect behind, but it seems that my mandate is most certainly, "I must not fail."

Well, I have failed.  I've failed to be perfect.  I've failed in ways that I dare not list here.  One thing I've succeeded in is being consistently vague.  Anyway, there, it's off my chest.  Again.  I suck.

I'm not looking for sympathy.  I'm not trying to be dramatic.  I just believe that God will somehow be glorified through me living my life out in the open, struggles and all.  That said, any prayer on my behalf is appreciated.