I am typically very well grounded.  I have come to terms with a lot of things in my life, and have learned how to live with it, forget it, or just accept it.  But, every now and then, I lose it.  When that happens, I have to set myself down and get my center back.

Why did I lose it this time?  I'm not sure if it was just one thing.  At least I can't find the one thing that did it to me. 

As I wrote before, I have Systemic Lupus.  For the longest time I tried to convince myself that it was really discoid (the lesser evil of the two Lupus types) and I told people that it was "just" discoid.  But, it's not.  And, I finally had to tell myself to deal with that.  Which, I think I have.

Last year I had to have the second operation on my Thyroid.  This time they removed the rest of it.  (I wrote an article about Thyroids that you can find on my blog site).  After the surgery, things weren't too great.  My Doctor then realized that I needed a different type of thyroid hormone.  So, I started the process of adjusting to it.  But, each time they change my dose, I don't feel "right" for 3 to 4 weeks.  Each time that they change it, it seems to take longer to adjust, too.  But, as long as I retain my ability to believe that "this too shall pass" I'll be OK.

But, I'm not sure that will happen now.  With my last trip to the doctor, I was told that my previous "almost considered borderline diabetic" glucose level now falls "well into the type II" guidelines.  I felt like my house of cards just got run over by a steamroller.

I'm mad at myself.  I was warned to start eating differently, but I didn't really do it.  I wish I believed in God, so I had somebody else to blame this on. 

The doctor wants to hold off on using medication to control it.  She wants me to try "diet therapy" first.  After I got done laughing at the political correctness of that, I started to look at what I needed to do.  First, I have to follow a strict diet, which I should have done before.  But, that's not the hard part.  She wants me to lose 20 pounds (since fat produces insulin).  The diet I can deal with.  Losing weight is a bit trickier.  First of all, just being diabetic makes it harder to lose weight.  I also have a seriously messed up metabolism due to not having a thyroid.  Exercise at this point is...well...painful due to the rheumatoid nodules that have grown on my ankles (which insurance won't pay to have removed because they are considered "cosmetic" until I can't move the ankle anymore).  So, how do I accomplish my goal?  I have no clue.  And, it drives me crazy.  I don't try to put road blocks up for myself, but I really feel like I'm in a construction zone right now and traffic is moving at a snails pace.

So, I am very not grounded right now.  I feel very stressed.  When I feel stressed, my mind plays disturbing tricks on me.  The worst of which is filling my dreams with dead people.  Not only dead people, but dead people that I didn't even know that well. 

One in particular is a resident stress dream dead person.  Ironically, as a child, this guy was called "Buddha".  Kids called him that because he was always *very* overweight.  I tried to talk to him once- but he decided to punch me in the face instead of chatting.  He was a very angry Buddha.....yet an *extremely* talented artist.  I used to watch him airbrush paintings while in high school and really wished I had enough guts to ask him to show me how to do it.  But, I was too afraid of the punch in the face.  I never could overcome that fear.  I never talked to him while he was alive.

You may be wondering at this point how he became a "dead person".  It's probably a sadder story than you are thinking.  You would think an angry man like that probably got stabbed in a fight or something like that.  But, that is not the case.  His anger came from the fact that he had an abusive family.  Abusive and falling apart.  He had very few friends.  After high school, he had no direction.  He was a "lost cause" in the eyes of many.  One day he wandered out into the woods with his dog.  He shot the dog then shot himself.  I've been bothered by that.  I always wished that I would have had the guts to talk to him.  To hear what he had to say, and to learn his mad skills in airbrushing.  But, I didn't. 

Instead, I talk to him in my dreams.  It's really quite odd.  I can remember exactly what he looked like.  I can even remember his voice.  I never knew him.  He is a manifestation of all the lost opportunities that I have had.  He reminds me that my life can be a whole lot worse than what it is right now.  He reminds me that sometimes it's really hard to find the good in people, and sometimes people act a certain way because of outside forces.

So, "Buddha" keeps chatting with me in my dreams.  He still hasn't taught me his airbrushing skills.  I'm pretty sure that he won't be able to help me with my diet issues.  I really wish that I could get rid of this stress so that dead people would quit visiting me in my dreams.

I really need to find my center.........