2003-03-26 - 6:19 p.m.

i'm claustrophobic, tense, paralysed. its partly war anxiety. no joking around when i say that this whole thing has me locked up tighter than a drum with fear. even seeing bombs fall on tv took me right back to the terror and helplessness i felt on sept 11 2001. and those are not pleasant emotions to experience. everyone in new york feels a terrorist action is a virtual certainty. c said over lunch to day she wishes they'd hurry up because the waiting is so hard. eternal vigilance. i am not ready.

and its partly all the other uncertainties scraping up against my normally sunny disposition. everything feels like clothes that don't fit. i'm having trouble leaving the house. in therapy, i have been working on being more expressive and transparent with my emotions. but its difficult when the emotional output is fear, agony, neediness. hard to project vulnerability when my greatest fear is that it will be met with defensiveness, indifference, rejection.

i turned off the radio since the war was making me even more uneasy. i'm listening instead to a maurizio/basic channel cd f made for me. he's right about minimal techno being a tonic for the overstimulated mind.

and now its raining. i say that with a little tiny sigh of relief, i've been waiting for the rain a little bit all day.