Mental cocoon

I went and signed up with a temp agency today, just so I can have something brainless to do that will let me earn a little money. It'll also get me out of the house during the day. Otherwise I'll sit here with nothing to do but THINK all day and that will drive me insane. The breakup is a learning experience, I know, and I want to deal with it in every aspect so that it doesn't get compartmentalized in my head and end up biting me in the ass years down the road. I want to feel all of it in its ooky, despairing, tumultuous badness and get it out of my system. But right now the pain and sadness are all-consuming and there's only so much blackness a person can process on a daily basis. I'm hoping salvation lies in the occasional secretarial job. It's an introduction back to the normal everyday world and as much as I'd like to throw myself in headfirst, I need to take it step by step.

Anyone who's ever experienced a major loss knows that you walk around feeling like someone's peeled off your skin and then dunked you in acid. Just *being* in the world is intimidating, overwhelming, occasionally dangerous. I feel flayed, raw, incapable of dealing with the most minute details of routine existence without breaking down. Every foray outside the safe confines of home is like a recon mission. The mall is a minefield. Starbucks is a proving ground. The gym is an obstacle course. I feel like an exile from the easy, day to day life that everyone around me seems to take for granted. Even though I know in my head that I need time to heal, I feel like I should be fine already and that everyone is secretly fed up with my fragility. All I want is to be clear of the pain, but there's no way to speed up the process and that can be incredibly frustrating.

Going out means that I have to consider things that never occurred to me before, like whether the place I'm going will have music playing (see the Shania Twain post). The radio is off limits unless it's the classical station and even that can be a crapshoot. I have to think twice about movies--will the movie make me cry, and am I having the kind of day where seeing a ton of couples on date night is going to plunge me off the deep end? The only thing I watch on TV is Sex and the City and whatever Jane Austen movie PBS happens to be rerunning.

I can't bring myself to read the newspaper or go to any of the Web pages I used to read every day. As horribly selfish as it sounds, I have too much to deal with in my own head to process the turmoil that's going on in the world right now. I've never felt so isolated before. The universe has me in a corner, it seems--no distractions allowed, only introspection. I am a world unto myself.