4:30 a.m. Eternal

4:30 in the morning is the hour of snakes. From time to time, I wake up at 4:30 with an anxiety attack. Like just now. I was having this hallucenogenic dream (I'm watching a corny slasher flick; it's just the expositionary part, where we're introduced to cartioonish, narrowly drawn caricatures of characters, and you can determine by how annoying they are how quickly they'll be killed; I'm in my car, it's night, summer, it starts to move down hill slowly, I can't get the brake to work, I turn the key, trying to get it to turn over, it won't, and then it does, jarringly screamiing to life). And then I'm awake. And the snakes come out. (I say snakes because, like Indiana Jones, snakes are my one phobia.) I've been aware of the coming conundrum of Tuesday night. I have therapy on Tuesday nights. Although for the past three Tuesday nights, I've missed therapy. First, because I got crazy at work and totally forgot, and then because it was Christmas Eve, and then because it was New Years' Eve. The last two are sort of legitimate, and the first one is excusable. But here's the thing: I didn't call my therapist. Not once. So this Tuesday night is the GMSMA Executive Committee meeting of the Board. So I'll need to call my therapist and reschedule. I'm not looking forward to that phone call. "Oh hell," I thought, "Tuesday night I have to go to Newburgh New York to stand trial for a speeding ticket. That means I have to miss both. And that would have been fine if I had replied to the reminder email about the Executive Committee meeting when I got it a week ago. But I didn't. I never put it together in my mind that the two things were mutually exclusive. And, once againn, I'm behind in my Treasurer duties for GMSMA. Why am I behind? How does this keep happening? Because I have no time. Why do I have no time? Hmmm. Why is it that I spend so much time in pursuit of sex or scenes, and yet I don't seem to have a lot of sex or scenes? And I sort of feel my shoulder as I turn over in bed. It feels boney. Why can't I get to the gym? I'll go to the gym tomorrow. No. I can't. Because I've got to come straight home from work and get caught up on GMSMA stuff. The next night. That's Newburgh. And I sort of have this weird feeling that I need to be 'policed' in some way. And this feeling is very, very dangerous. I had this feeling nine years ago. I went on a date with this guy that I wasn't particularly attracted to. he had an apartment that was neat as a pin, and an ordered and productive life. No getting behind and botching his scheduling for him. And wanting what he seemed to have, I ended up in a seven-and-a-half-year relationship that was unfulfilling and made me miserable. I was policed out the wazoo. And why was it unfulfilling? Well, for one thing, there wasn't a moment that you could call 'intimate' in all seven years. Am I afraid of intimacy? Nah... I couldn't be. I've done scenes that were unbelievably intimate. Yeah, but is that sort of 'junk-food' intimacy? Is it legitimate? I mean, shouldn't intimacy take place within the context of a committed relationship? Or, at least, a relationship? And does all of this have anything to do with this recent urge to be submissive? Am I trying to find a Master when I should be trying to find a therapist? But I have a therapist. But I haven't been telling her any of this shit. I need to be policed. Maybe by my therapist. She'd open up a can of whup-ass on me if I told her that. Savvy therapist that she is. Snakes. Snakes snakes snakes snakes snakes. A sort of roiling nest of snakes. Coming out of every crevice. And I have to be together for a 9 a.m. meeting with my boss and a confidant of his. And now it's 5:30. I'll go back to bed. When the alarm clock rings in an hour and fifteen minutes, I'll be exhausted. Maybe I should just stay up? Uh-huh. And after work today I'll be exhausted and come home and fall asleep, and I won't get the GMSMA stuff done for yet another night. Criminy.

Okay. Get a grip. What you're feeling is stress. Your life was no different essentially three months ago, and you were happy as a clam. In that three months, you changed jobs, and from the git-go, there were intimations that that might not have been a wise move. That is a cause of stress. What you're feeling is stress. Focus on the actual problems. Break the big problems down into smaller problems, and figure out solutions to those. That's the process of taking back control. Start doing that and the stress goes away. It's not indicative of the fact that you're somehow a 'bad person' because you're feeling stress. So just relax. Breathe. Now get to bed so you can get a little more sleep. You have a busy day tomorrow.

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