I'm Insane!!!

I had never really given much thought to what insane meant.  For 30ish years of my life I just thought it meant crazy.  I mean it made sense....

"she took coke"....that's crazy

"he hit another car"......that's crazy

"he married her"........that's crazy

"she tried to kill him".......that's really crazy

it makes sense, if you don't think about it too long (which is why you're labeling it crazy to begin with)  we label it  and mentally dismiss it.

SO when a friend told me at 35 that insane meant "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result" that really blew my mind.  And I don't mean in a good way.  I was very happy in my naive "crazy" world not really understanding what it meant.  Now I had an actual definition and now I had some habits myself that landed in that "insane" category.

Take for example when I am having a rough time with something.  Whether that something is breaking my nail or having cancer, my mind and body always react the same way.  I must (I mean must) mentally go to the worst case scenario and play it through my entire mind, sometimes for days and sometimes with various "worst" scenarios.  Giving my nail as an example, when I see it's broken I immediately go to " is it going to be broken all the way down to my skin (worst case) or can I file it slightly "off" and save that side or will I cut it even with the break or can I just put some super glue on it.  So in a matter of seconds I have sized up the "worst case" down to the best case and then make a decision based on all of this information.  That doesn't mean I take a long time to make decisions or get results (once I reach the full disclosure stage) , it actually means quite the opposite, I've already sized up the worst so I move forward quickly.  I will say that 90% of my decisions are good ones and that means 10% are not.  Good enough for an A, so I'll stick with my patterns.  

During this time of information gathering and decision making, my body becomes a bit tense and I'm not hungry at all, and it takes me a while to physically get past this.  I have found that a nice warm hot shower usually does the trick.  And I think that's ok, although my family claims I am single handedly emptying out the Everglades.  I however, don't feel this is the case as we don't even have sprinklers, so an extra shower a day won't drain the Everglades and leave my Grandchildren without any water.

While I'm in the shower, I mentally try to imagine that all my worries, anxieties, frustrations and fears will lather up with the soap and rinse right off.  It was so pleasant, until tonight, when I realized that my shower was nothing more than an insane act.  While the shower was a temporary diversion, all the very same fears, worries, anxieties and frustrations (albeit were lessened) came back when the warmth of the water left my skin.  

I realized that I was officially insane.  I also realized if I could solve anxiety, frustrations and fear, I would be single handedly the richest woman on the planet, probably universe.  A reason faith is so powerful.  It's at times like these last couple of months, years, that I am so very grateful for a thing called faith, it's probably what keeps you from being completely insane.  Now that's crazy, good crazy!!

P.S. Please don't give me the actual definition of crazy!!!