If you haven't figured it out by now, I walk a fine line between sanity and insanity.

I'm not sure if I was always like this or when it began, but I am slightly crazy. Just am.

Not disheveled crazy. Or harmful to other people crazy. Not Fatal Attraction crazy or even Cruel Intentions crazy...just crazy.

I've never been medicated. I've never been in therapy. I've never been in rehab.

I tell you that last fact, because a very close friend of mine asked me this weekend if I had been in rehab. This was after he'd been drinking all day.

My response to that question? "Do you think I should be?"

*~*

I'm crazy in that I overthink everything. If I spent half as much time thinking about my career or inventions as I do about myself and my personal life - I would probably be TIME Magazine's Woman of the Year. I would probably find the cure to cancer and million other things dehabilitating beautiful people around the world.

But for some reason, I overthink my life. Sometimes I overthink it to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes I think about it to the point of tears. Sometimes, I am able to not think about it at all.

I like those times.

Here's the thing about my life. Ok? Here's the real goocher. Just when everything is great, it's like a swirling cloud of sunsets and vibrancy and friends and joy...and it lifts me to this point where I supercede the problems I think up for myself and it's like I am floating about the clouds I have created and I am staring at blue skies - as far as the eye can see.

And MY GOD, that's a beautiful view and a beautiful feeling, until dark clouds in the form of unbearable sadness come rolling in and I come slamming down. The sunsets bottom out and I come crashing down.

Every time that the dark clouds come in, I don't see them coming. They just appear.

And before long, I feel disconnected. I feel like a kid on the first day at a new school. Friendless, empty, alone.

There's no reason for it to come. There is no "incident" that triggers its onset. But comes and I cannot muster a laugh for friends. I can't fake it.

Speaking with my parents is enough to make my throat tighten and I force myself to seal my lips as tightly as possible so as not to let a sob escape when my father asks me if I received his flowers on Valentine's day.

I try to make a joke, and mention that I didn't and I just assumed that 27 is the year I got cut off and that is received with silence. He feels badly. He apologizes and he sounds concerned, and I try to focus on an invisible spot on my white wall so that the wells of water that have summoned in my eyes don't spill over.

When sadness comes I try to sit quietly and distract myself with books or music. My eyes read words but the images are never relayed to my brain and the result is that I go pages, chapters, without having read a goddamn thing.

I try not to cry when I'm sad, because I hate to cry. I hate that feeling of hurt and heartache and sometimes when it starts I think it will never stop, so I'd rather it just never started.

I feel that way, when I see other people cry. I makes me feel helpless and out of control. I hate that loss of control. We have so little of it in life, I want to keep what I have of it.

I hate to see people in pain, because I know pain. Sometimes when sadness comes it hurts so much that I feel like I can barely breathe, so I focus on both not crying and breathing. Sometimes it makes me feel that I, like a character in a fairy tale, will truly die of heartache.

I'm the kind of person that would rather absorb pain, than inflict it. When I am angry with someone, I generally blame myself rather than hate them. Unless you really piss me off. Then I cut you off.

There are people in this world, who blame others and then there are those who blame themselves. I am a self-blamer. I take it all.

I'd like to take a minute, to be the other kind of person and blame my mother for making me into this person. The emotionally unavailable one. The ice-princess. The one who told me when I was 7 or 8 not to wear my emotions on my face. The one who sent me to grammar school and told me not to wear my heart on my sleeve.

And if I blame her I should blame my father because he was there and sharing 50% of the responsibilty. After something bad happened to me, years ago, they found me silent. I remember their hushed tones. Conferring like moms and dads do. I vaguely remembering them not pressing me on what happened, which in fairness I probably could not have told as I was hysterical after it happened. Then, I distinctly remember not talking about it. Never talking about it. After it happened, they took me home and sent me upstairs to clean off the blood and change my clothing. And then we went out for dinner. As we did every Wednesday night. And we went though the motions without missing a beat. I think I even smiled and spoke politely to the people who stopped by our table that night, just as I had been taught to do since before I can remember.

But you know what? I can't do it. I can't blame them. Parents don't have all the answers. How the fuck were two stiff-upper lipped Catholics supposed to handle bad things that happened to 12-year-old girls?

Catholics don't go to therapy, they go to confession.

They handled it just as their parents handled them, undoubtably. They did what they thought was right, and maybe it wasn't right but they thought it was and you know what? Here I am. A college grad. Living on her own. Functioning in society. Building a career. With a Christmas card list to rival my parents.

Who the hell am I to blame parents who did the best they could? They didn't raise a hand to me. I received shiny new toys for Christmas. They sent me to college. They love me. Not TV love, where we all sit around and profess our love for each other.

My mother loves me in the way that she buys little candle holders for me that she sees at the dollar store and thinks I might like. In dresses that she sews for me because she saw a pattern she thought would be my style. My father loves me in the flowers he sends to me, even though I am a grown up now, on Valentines Day and my birthday.

And because of that love, I'm just not able to blame them for bad things that happen to 12-year-old girls. Or the way that two lovers handled it when it happened to the child they brought into the world.

Neither can I blame them for sadness. In life, sadness will come to all of us at times - not just me, because I am little bit crazy.

When it comes, I try to remember that it will pass. I also try to think of other people in this world who have greater sadness than mine, although it feels like mine is the weight of the world, tied around my neck.

Sadness is a part of everyone's life. Some people hide it better than others. No one told me this when I was a child. I thought I would outgrow it. I thought sadness ended when my right hand extended to shake the hand of the Principal or College President and my left hand extended to grasp the diploma. I thought that that piece of paper was my ticket. A ticket away from problems and sadness and heartache and fright.

It wasn't. So I am telling you. Sadness will be a part of your life, too.

Which is all the more reason, to treasure the other days. The happy moments and the laughter and the times when you feel safe.

Those moments make the sad times bearable. Worth working though.

For me.

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