Let's call my issue x. X can pull me away from whatever I'm doing and take me to a very different place. I go through periods when it seems like all I can think about is x. I sometimes take money that's going to be spent on something else and find a way to spend it on x. I rearrange my schedule to make room for x. When I'm down in the dumps, I tell myself I need x. When things are going really well, I tell myself I deserve x.
Then I get mad at myself for being so wrapped up in x in the first place, for not having the backbone to resist, for once again not living up to the kind of picture I have of "how I should be."
If others found out about x, depending on who it is, I'd be anywhere from mildly embarrassed to thoroughly mortified. I often feel that, because of x, the rest of my life is somehow a sham.
I think of how grand it would be not to have x as part of my life. I imagine other, x-free, me's. I project to a day when, at long last, I will be done with x. I figure I'm the only person on the planet with such an x to deal with.
And then I wake up.
I do this a lot.
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