My WorryList for the Cruise

This blogpost is an example of 'processing your emotions,' something I preach to everyone. My theory is that if I write these down they won't bug me so much when I awake in the morning and my mind turns on. Gong gong gong!

It was not until 7 this a.m. that I actually examined my itinerary and found out exactly when I leave - my daughter and I will leave from JFK Tues nite at 9:55 pm. We'll have 3 nites in Barcelona before boarding the Celebrity Cruise ship which'll tour the northern Mediterranean for a week. I emailed the ship my dietary regulations last nite - it was immensely difficult for me to do that - I included 3 kidney diet links and stated 'the one from scotland is the most liberal.'

My main concern is falling asleep aboard the cruise ship. The room will be pitch dark. No windows. I've packed a nite-lite. I'm worried about the sounds I'll hear. The lurching motor of the ship. The endless drone. Will it drive me crazy? Will I sit up in bed clutching my face?

No I will not take a tranquilizer. Mind-altering drugs are no longer my style. I take approx 12 different meds for my kidney problems. I threw out all my Klonopin long ago.

Before manic depression held me hostage for 20 years I was fearless. This is true.

PS - My fam doctor's office just called. I just hired him and am very pleased. Joanne said they just faxed over all my info to the Jefferson Kidney Transplant Dept. I thanked her generously and realized what a great choice of doctors I made. They faxed it immediately! Great service.

So, until the onset of bipolar I was just a regular gal, a prolific writer and newsletter editor for Art Matters, and then my brain drastically changed with the coming of the illness. Fear set in and stalked me day and nite.

Here's why I'm equating being on the ship to my illness. In the first few months after I got sick, I imagined I could actually feel the earth moving around the sun. I'd lay in bed at nite with the parking lots flicking over the living room which is where I slept on a couch and I'd feel this ever so slight movement of the world turning.

It was not a pleasant feeling.

Ya know something?As I'm writing this, I'm already feeling better about the ship.

Prior to the blog I imagined that when I closed my eyes in my state room I'd imagine I were an African tribal woman torn from her family and manacled with hundreds of others in the rank stinking quarters of the slave ship begging for food and water.

Oh, turn on your nitelight, Ruthie, to vanish such horrid thoughts.

Any other worries, Ruthie?

Actually they've been expunged by the very act of blogging. Is that possible?