The more I delve into "stuff" the more revelations and observations I make. One is this -- I feel like, based upon everything that happened to me, I should be a completely dysfunctional mess, probably not capable of doing much of anything. I guess maybe it's because I'm stronger all around than I admit to myself, but I'm perfectly "real world" functional -- educated, white collar career, own a home, financially, cut my grass, vote, that sort of thing. I've never had any substance abuse issues, any legal problems of any kind (in fact, my sole "brush with the law" was a traffic ticket for going 32 in a 25 zone, and that I found traumatic).

That is the public persona. In private, I'm a mess - nervous, sad, angry, bitter. I tend to bottle it up, and turn it against myself. The tape in my head for years was "you're scum, you're worthless." And, I always felt like the public persona was a total fraud. If I got something right or did something well, it was just "dumb luck" and I couldn't ever tolerate praise or "good job" comments. If I screwed up, though, that was just confirmation of the fact I was the scum of the earth and a waste of perfectly good oxygen.

I was thinking about that this morning while on one of my desensitization trips around town. I don't know why, because I have known this for years, but I had an "oh, yeah, that's why" moment. Because, my upbringing was full of this hypocrisy. My father insisted that he have "the perfect family" to show to the outside world. And, as soon as the doors were all locked and the curtains drawn, all Hell broke loose and it was back to the North Korean Gulag.

When I had my "crisis" last year, that was the ultimate along these lines. I managed to cover it up, for the most part, in an operation worthy of the CIA or the Nixon Whitehouse. Almost no one in "real life" knows what happened, I was able to explain away or just plain hide other circumstances. I was lucky, frankly, in some ways -- for example, 3 weeks in the day hospital program, my boss obviously knew something was up, told him it was medical but too painful to talk about, and I was able to cover myself by working some evenings after the day program to keep up with case files and court filings. Family didn't know because it was same hours as going to work, and I just told them I had to put in some OT because of workload. Of course, they knew something big was up, but in the end blew it off as a "midlife crisis" - a conclusion I was happy to run with. I can't begin to express how much I want to hide my mental health history/issues from the world. That is my first priority.

Anyone else feel like this, like they are fighting hard to keep their heads above water and prevent the world from ever finding out they are anything less than 110 % "Normal"?