Quagmire

That’s what my life feels like. It feels like I’m trying to wade through a swamp, sinking deeper with every step, trying to avoid the quicksand pits to either side of the path. Not that there is a path, as such, just less dense areas of scraggly foliage, which I’m trying to convince myself makes a path so I have somewhere to walk.

But lately, I’ve been inclined to just stand still.

Even though I know that’s just going to make me sink.

Extended metaphor aside, I do feel like I’ve been backsliding in the last week and a half or so, sinking back down into the worst of my habits from before I tried to turn my life around and rejoin society. I’m not sure that I’m actually doing any worse than I have been–apart from freaking out about having to do an interview and starting a semi-abortive attempt to drop my only class (jury’s still out as to whether or not I’ll actually end up dropping it)–but it feels more stagnant because I can’t sit on my couch anymore.

I recognize that that actually sounds less stagnant, when you just hear it, except that my house is such a mess that there are basically three places I can sit in the whole house: the sofa, the toilet and the bed. But now I can’t sit on the sofa anymore, so I’ve been spending most of my time in the house in my room, sitting on the bed to do whatever. I don’t eat in the bedroom–apart from crumb-free-type snacks–so I have to sit on the toilet lid if I want to eat a meal in the house. Or I suppose I could sit in the bathtub, but…yeah, that would be weird.

After a little more time spent cleaning, I should be able to get the chair in the back room ready for sitting in, but until then, I feel like I’ve traded a house for a one-room apartment. A very tiny one. And something about sitting on the bed makes me feel even less inclined to do anything resembling work.

Worse, I think it’s exacerbating my already massive social phobias.

But I don’t know what to do about it. Apart from getting that cleaning done on Thursday (trash and recycling both go out on Friday, so Thursday is cleaning day) so I can start using the back room as my new sitting room.

When I eventually get the house cleaned up to the point where I can get rid of the sofa, I’m not going to replace it with a new sofa. I’m going to get a recliner instead. That way all that extra space can hold a couple of bookshelves. Since the sofa itself has been acting as a bookshelf for a while anyway. Most importantly, the bookshelves would be sitting where my poor kitty was when she died, and the chair would be off to the side, so I wouldn’t feel like I was sitting in a cursed spot. (I know, cats don’t leave behind curses when they die–neither do people–but…I don’t think I can ever bring myself to sit there again.)

And, of course, the weather is getting warm, and the sun is getting bright, and my arm is acting up even worse than ever, which makes me even more inclined to stay home and hide from the world. That isn’t helping, either.

But I have no idea what kind of doctor I should see about this problem with my arm. My mother says to see a neurologist, but the last one I saw thought I was making it up.

I should stop stalling. I have e-mails to write for class (whether I drop or not, they still have to be written). I shouldn’t be just sitting here randomly complaining.

But it’s easier to stall than it is to do what has to be done.

It’s easier to hide than it is to face the sunlight.

It’s easier to sink than to push ahead through the sludge.