Math.

My sleep goes one of two ways: I get none and spend the day feeling like a zombie, or I get lots and I'm fucking loath to get out of bed. My dreamscape is goddamn *vivid*, y'all. Filled with rich adventure and heroic types. This has been the case for as long as I can remember, but in the last couple of years it's driven me to distraction.

Why can't my always be like my dreams?

But that's not why I'm here. I mean. That's why I'm here, I'm in the former stage and possibly soon to be slipping into the latter and so I am writing. But I'm not here to discuss that.

Tonight it's math that's bugging me.

Because I was poor for a lot of my growing up I used to attribute my emotional distress to a lack of dough. Bread. Ducats. I quantified my unhappiness based on income for some of the same reasons I imagine an anorexic person fixates on their BMI. It allows a person to put the pain of existing into a manageable little column of figures and stats. It's almost soothing, as it provides the illusion that all you need to do is pull a few levers and you'll turn the corner. You'll wake up Free.

So I assigned myself some numbers. An amount I should be making. An amount I required my boyfriends to be making. An amount I wanted on hand at all times. These numbers allowed me to set hard and fast rules about whether or not I was happy without doing any real introspection.

It was about a million times easier to calculate the difference between what I was making and what I wanted to make than it was to determine how much soothing and loving and soul searching it would take to get over the fact that neither of my parents ever really gave a fuck about me, ya know?

So there you have it. That was my logic.

And I lived hard by those numbers. Justified insane amounts of soul-sucking work to the point that all I ever knew was rat racing. Showed some good guys the door. Climbed that fucking ladder. Boy howdy, did I ever climb that fucking ladder.

Before I knew it I was operating on the assumption that I was at a deficit every single day. I lost track, and for quite some time I kept acting like I was poor even though I had not only met my numbers, but exceeded them to an extent I'd never even thought possible.

Mind you: I'm still no baller. I can't walk into British Motor Cars and buy some brand new fantastic and glimmering shit right off the lot like people do in the movies. I can't afford a mansion in the hills and a clydesdale named Buttercup. But for a solo chick with no education to speak of and no shorties snatching my crumbs I do a-motherfucking-okay.

But you know what that means, don't you? The jig is up. Because according to my math I Should Be Just Fine.

I should be. Free.

And I'm not.

I'd say I feel disillusioned, but I never really believed in the numbers. They always felt a little like saying the same word over and over again until it doesn't feel like a real word anymore. They were more veils.

Even still, I am scrambling now. Intimidated by recovery's blank pages. Because all that's left to do is The Real Work. The time for measuring in dollars is passed, and I'm not sure I trust myself with any other method of gauging how far I've come.