safety nets & sadness.

Birthdays & me.  Does anyone else find the birthDAY to be a lot of pressure?  In my family, we celebrate birthdays for a week.  Nothing big; just little perks all through a week.  I feel like people think we're crazy, but it's perfect for me.  Celebrating just a birthDAY freaks me out.  Not because I'm getting older {yet}, but more the spotlight of it, the pressure of squeezing what I can out of that one day, and the memory of a pretty traumatic one.  A couple years ago, I decided to celebrate my birthday with a massage party {don't be dirty :)!}.  We had a family friend who is a masseuse to come over and give massages.  What I didn't factor in was the tremendous amount of pressure that I was actively functioning under and that this massage was going to break down every barrier I had built.  What I didn't foresee was the torrential floodgates that were going to fly open in the moments and days afterwards.  I fell to pieces.  It didn't help that my husband's health was deteriorating at a rate I couldn't even fathom.  I remember breaking when they went to sing me happy birthday and he left the chair for the first time in days to try to come out and sing to me.  This memory dominates my birthday.  I thought this year would be different.  God has ushered someone new into my life.  I have truly felt like God opened doors and anointed timing and prepared the place I'm at right now.  In spite of all that, I still slipped right into the melancholy and have now spent a solid thirty hours feeling like my life exists on eggshells.  I'm not sure if I'm reading into things or if a division has actually begun.  I should probably shut down completely to just keep from doing further damage.  The positive?  I guess I'm seeing that my safety net is, infact, imaginary.  What a vulnerable place to be.  I guess it's healthy.  I think it's a good thing.  I'm not sure I like it.  I feel very much like standing out here in the open is the scariest thing I've attempted in awhile and I'd very much like to hide, but I don't think I would be happy with that decision long-term. Instead, I'm trying to suppress the crazy so that I don't trip over myself.