I really was going to bed.  Then I noticed the 'drafts' section - things that I'd started writing but never finished or published.  Pandora, you scoundrel!  

I just had to open them.  There were 75 of them so ok, I just had to open about six of them.  The ones specific to the last few years.  

What an eye opener.  Ever know something but either talk yourself out of it or allow someone else to mutate your thoughts...whether or not they realize they have a hand in it?  That's what I read.  I read doubt.  And intuition that if I had listened to then, I probably would have been using the butter trick a lot sooner.  

It actually made me feel a little sad.  For what, I am not sure.  Lost time?  Failed intentions?  For failing myself most of all?  What a cute Pollyanna I was, paddling that steamboat down d'Nile.  

And yet, I knew.  I knew that I was slowly sacrificing myself and cutting away more and more important parts of me.  It's how I coped.  When someone in the house is drastically unhappy, I try to change things to make them feel better.  I learned eventually that I could eventually disappear by giving myself away more and more and it would not help.  

He has told me since that he knows that his negativity has done this to me.  And I knew it was a matter of time that if things were really not how I wanted to be living, that I would go into some auto pilot defense mechanism that would remove me from the situation.  

I need to learn to trust myself more.  But hindsight is always obvious.  Isn't it?