Hiding.

My daughter goes up and lays in her bed, sometimes, after school or on the weekends.  She watches shows on the iPad, under the blankets in her bed.  I realize she is learning this behavior, this way of coping, from me... learning to be like me.  And I never want her to be like me in that way...

This isn't me, is it?  This isn't the Joanna I used to know.  I don't want to stay in my bed and live looking through the open doorway, while I sit here and write or read, or just think, and feel, or not think and not feel.

I am horrified that my children may never know "me" and just know a ghost of a mother.  Me being in bed is normal.  I can't find another place in my house to feel comfortable...  I walk out, and I wander around, looking, and then I get back under my covers.  I look for a place for me, and I can't find one.  Does that mean we need to move our furniture around, or does that mean, I have found comfort in being in this solitude and this one single spot in my house, where no one else ever sits?  It's just where I go.  I don't come here when I feel happy.  I don't come here when I feel normal.  Yet, here I am, most of my life.  

I'm hiding from something.  I know, ever since I was a little girl, I needed my blankets tucked in on the bottom or I couldn't sleep; I didn't feel comfortable with the possibility of my feet being uncovered.  I felt safe in the blankets wrapped securely around the mattress and my feet protected from everything because they were tucked in there.  And I tuck myself in now.  I tuck myself into the covers and I often feel frozen in space, in this place.  I am cold when I am exposed.  I am not safe when I am exposed.  Blankets cover me and make me feel warm and less scared.  

When I can get up and out, sometimes, I realize I am not truly out, anywhere.  I am still hiding from people.  I hide from phone calls, and I don't leave the house, and I sometimes will avoid the people I love the most.  I could be with my children... so close...  I can see them from the open doorway, from my spot on the bed, yet I don't get up.  I stay.  I stay.  

I hate this spot, even though it gives me comfort.  I hate this place, and I don't want to be here, or even sleep here, even though that's all I should be doing under my bed covers.  I shouldn't be here, sitting and thinking about all the things I could and should be doing, yet not doing.  I should get up.  Get up!  I curl up further, into myself, and burrow down.  My legs disappear.  Do they even work?  

I should feel better tomorrow.  I know that.  I know I will feel better tomorrow, and this darkness and fear and detachment will lift away.  I know it is the time that it should.  I am always scared that it won't happen... That I will not leave this spot, and I'll be here, even when I'm supposed to feel better.  I'm scared of being trapped here.  The blankets begin to feel like they are wrapping around my legs, twisting up tightly, and binding me here.  They start to suffocate me and suck me down.  They don't let go of me.  

You could tell me, just as I tell myself, just pull them off you and get the fuck up.  Just get up and do anything but lay there and let them hold you in that place.  And I listen.  I listen and I rip them back, and say, for more than 12 days a month, my children will come home from school and not find me here.  I think I'll get something done, and I won't just be overwhelmed by everything and take one small step at a time, and see each small step as an accomplishment...  Each time my feet touch the floor, I'm winning a battle:  I'm doing better than I was when I was bound to the single spot.  

But I keep coming back.  I am drawn back in and under.  And I am terrified there will be a time when my legs stop working altogether.  1, 2, 3, ready or not, here I come!  like the child who is too young to realize that hiding under the table every time he plays the game, means he will be found every time, in that same place.  Children get older and realize they have to be tricky, and change, and move. That hiding spot was good for one round, but it won't work again.  

I don't want to be here, in this single spot, living my life with this one view... this view of the light through the open door, and the clutter on my nightstand, and the closet full of "teacher" clothes I haven't worn for years, and out the glass doors, outside... where it's dark and raining right now, but it keeps changing... it changes from light to dark, from bright to cloudy.  It is cold, it is warm.  Outside it's never the same.  How did I become so singular, and so stagnant, and so shallow?  I'm right here, you don't really have to look for me.  I'm under these covers.  

Update:  Lamictal...  It made me feel comatose and confused and stuck.