more of the same - bored yet?

So, after our lovely little break in which we experienced all that Wittenberg has to offer, let's get back to our lovely recent theme of all of my previously repressed emotions surfacing at the same time in great magnitude. Because I can't think about anything else right now, you don't get to either. Ha!

It's scientifically (or sociologically or psychologically) interesting for me to note how I deal with these freaking enormous waves of repressed emotion while at the same time being drugged into emotionlessness. I still feel the intensity of the emotion, but the nuances are gone. I just experience pure adrenaline, which converts itself inside my brain into the neurological signals which get transmitted to my nerves and various organ systems, and what comes out in my consciousness is either pain or fear. Pain intensified turns into numbing blindness and constant muscle ache; fear intensified equals pure panic, at least inside my own personal collection of physiological processes that comprises my body.

I now have a complete aversion reaction to the building in which I work, and all of the offices, machines and furniture associated with it. When I was little, I once took Kaopectate to assuage a bout of diarrhea. I was too sick for it to help much, and ended up puking up the white creamy medication all over my green shag rug. Can't stand the stuff to this day - just the smell of it turns my stomach. Work is like that for me now. When I walk to work in the morning, it's like getting back on the plane to return to Germany: all of my instincts start putting up red flags and telling me GET OUT and You're going the wrong way! and Danger, danger! I have to shut them off, turn off my gag reflex entirely, in order to put one foot in front of the other and step over the threshhold. The last thing I need right now are goddamn fucking panic attacks.

I've been running a low-grade fever for days, not enough to really drag my under, but enough to glaze over my eyes and my thinking. I'm sure this is my body finally relaxing from the stress I've put it through. But understanding where it comes from doesn't make it go away.

To sum up: emotions that are successfully filtered by the drugs and shunted into my physiological junk mail include: happiness, joy, affection (and, to be fair, probably some bad ones as well). Those that are left over - which I get to feel - include fear, panic, pain, malaise and dissatisfaction.

I don't mean to just complain and leave it at that, or to heap all of my problems on the Internets and make them (you) fix me. Please believe me when I say I am doing everything I possibly can to work through this. There are just some days when it feels like too much for one person to handle. And I totally plan to find a better therapist when I get home. :-)