With the focus I gave to my birthday candles.

Have you ever had one of those moments/days/weeks/months/years/lifetimes where you know that the way you’re behaving is stupid and irrational, but somehow the indisputable knowledge of that fact still is not enough to get you to actually curb said behavior? Where you know that you’re being completely insane, but your recognition of that insanity doesn’t bring you any closer to being able to reclaim your peace of mind?

Yeah. Welcome to my weekend.

It was 48 hours of pretty much all work all the time, which had the effect (as it sometimes does) of turning me into a raving lunatic. Internally, anyway. Externally, no one had any idea what was raging away inside. Which of course made it even worse—no outlet for my internal hurricane. Until I went out with my good friend L last night and filled her in on (some) of my mental goings-on. And she was a big help, as usual. Kudos to her.

And now here it is Monday morning, and the things I was obsessing over are totally fine (as expected), but instead of just being happy about that I feel exhausted and shameful that I allowed myself to spend 48 hours being consumed as I was. Eaten from the inside out. And the most annoying part is that I have enough experience with this to know that the next time I feel it coming on, I once again won’t be able to do anything about it. Kind of like Michael Jackson in the Thriller video: moon rising, him looking at his cutely poodle-skirted girlfriend and knowing that any moment he’s going to try to devour her.

Aw, poor Jacko. I feel for ya, dude.