That's funny, I feel fine.

I spent the entire month of January being insane without realizing it. On the outside, everything seemed normal -- I was upbeat at work, eating well and going to the gym, and I even managed to put some finishing touches on the apartment my boyfriend and I moved into in November. Amazing how those last few boxes sit overflowing by the door for months, as if I had unpacked enough and I expected them just to unpack themselves or throw themselves away. It was a picture of boring domesticity. Only I was insane.

Maybe I didn't notice my warped state of mind because I was coming off of the crazy Christmas retail season. Maybe it was because there was a sense of "normal" to our lives again. The boyfriend was working on a big music project and got a part-time job (finally!!!) to get him out of the house. I just let my guard down and assumed "normal" was okay... but to any sane person, what had been normal for us would have immediately struck you as crazy.

My first clues should have come from this blog. I wasn't writing in it. Sure, I have made a few offline journal entries, but I abandoned this publishing experiment on blogger. One reason for lack of literary output: sleep. I was sleeping a lot. Too much. Lots of naps. That used to be my old life, my "normal" life. So the signs were there in front of me, but I was too crazy to notice.

Then the pressure really started to build. My boyfriend's jobs were suddenly driving him nutso -- one was soul-sucking his creative juices in advance of a new album release; the other basically lied to him and tried to give him barista wages for computer support job... Oh, and they didn't like paying anyway. There we were, two underpaid, overworked men trying to live off of my Crate & Barrel salary (love the job, love the discount, tolerate the paycheck). Rather than leave bills unpaid, we scrounged together and resented every penny we could find until the coffee nazis decided they could pay up (note to Ladro fans: they still haven't paid... can store closings be far behind?).

The stress of all this let the crazy in me finally surface. I went off the deep end, accusing the boyfriend of making the whole thing up like a bad season of "Dallas". I decided that he was just using me for sex and didn't really have any coffee or music related jobs. How could we be so tired and not have anything to show for it?

After venting my insanity, my pupils returned to normal size and the flame-spewing crack in my skull closed up. Bottling up my frustrations and pretending "normal" is good did me no good whatso-fucking-ever. I feel better now. I may still be crazy, but that's better than normal anyday.

Look for random writings and ravings to continue.