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How do you know that you are sane?








I expect what I mean is: what is it that stops people from seriously 
doubting that they are anything other than "normal".

People are constantly shrieking things like "AGgghh! You're driving me Mad!" "Hell! Now I'm losing my mind!" "I'm going insane!" They might even legitimately feel that they are - the levels of stress they've gone through are overwhelming their thought-process. It's madness-for-a-moment.

They accept that the human condition is to do mad things, and behave in mad ways, but that this doesn't define a person as "mad". So then, how does one know when one has just enough eccentricities? phobias? aberrations? How many of the afore-mentioned are the tip-over point into lunacy? How do we - you - me know  what the acceptable "norm" is?

Lest this sound for a moment disingeuous - it's prompted by genuine feelings: I'd thought I was starting to get though the fog and, well, horror of the last few years.  I've finally been forced to recognise, without ducking, that I haven't.

Yet, I've been marking the last two years by "steps".

Step 1. Committing to coming back to work
Step 2. Being able to take on more: - more research, more writing, more Social Media.
Step 3. Letting my protective guise down a little - wearing jeans & t.shirts again every once in a while.
Step 4. Holding on to my opinion in the face of (any) criticism

...you get the drift. It pleased me privately to count up these achievements.  Every once in a while I'd share one on Twitter a propos something else.

But it seems that, all the while these bits of things were happening, nothing had changed underneath.  Deep in the unknown mind of this Cireena, the well-worn treads of 'unstable' Cireena were scored indelibly.

How the hell, after years of living with a mental illness, could I not recognise that I was heading toward a point where red lights should have been flashing, bells shrilling,  - or at the very least an old man with a hand-held plaque with DANGER on it should have alerted me. How do you know, faccrissake, when you are an acceptable part of the human condition and when you aren't?

In the end, last Friday, it wasn't I who brought up the question of my mental health.  It came from within family.

And I almost felt a sense of relief.

It actually is really simple. I am broken more thoroughly than I had allowed myself to admit
. I'm facing two choices: either -

1. I'm in a state of mental collapse. I don't have the strength left any more to fight through that. 

2. I'm in the early stages of Alzheimers. There is nothing I can do to fight through that.

Whatever - this is a whole new version of Reality to me.

 It's rather scarey.
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