I was writing this for psychology today but got all scatttered and sad and….

This hasn’t been one of the best weeks in my life. I’m obsessive. Usually I have my taxes done and in the bowels of the IRS as soon as possible. This year, for reasons I do know, I couldn’t care less. Then a week ago Saturday I felt different——hyper and crazed. I used to know that feeling well. There was a time I even liked it. It made me super-productive. It kept my weight down. It was like natural speed. Like every speed addict there reached a point when it came crashing down.

I thought I was having a breakdown. It turned out that problems that can be solved, or put to the side with meds aren’t called breakdowns. I was a bit disappointed as I thought maybe I could spend sometime in a treatment facility. One that offered rehab, and maybe could help with the problems I was just beginning to understand were spatial. But because I understand and because I was so darn rational I was told I didn’t belong in a facility.

Cut to last week. Once more I felt that feeling. All I could think about was my taxes. By the time I got to the preparer I forgot that I had put everything in order, did all the computations and basically was just bringing them to a storefront in Walmart (don’t judge) to confirm my work. I had to explain almost everything to the preparer. I didn’t have the computations in front of me but really––do people really need calculators to multiply, add and subtract? OK my Dad was a CPA and I guess his lessons took. I was faster than the preparer. He told me he felt wrong taking money from me when I was the one doing the work. I didn’t explain that if I hadn’t had somebody else do it I would have been convinced I did everything wrong even if it passed a computer program.

I went shopping. Just as I was about to check out I panicked. I was convinced I left all the documents in the ladies room. Can you imagine losing your identity to a Walmart customer or worker? Then I looked in my bag….

I was exhausted the next day. It used to be so exhausting being me. It still is sometimes. But the exterior of my house was being painted——nobody told me a wood house in the South has to be painted every five to seven years. I don’t know what I thought happened to wood. I didn’t even know about pressure washing. I know a lot about doormen but that really doesn’t help in a stand alone home.

That past weekend my next door neighbors were here for one of their rare visits. They made it very clear that they didn’t like turquoise. I had told them I was going to paint it turquoise months ago. They said: “that’s nice” or something equally patronizing. I guess they thought I was like them——always getting estimates and never actually doing anything. Once more they told me about the court’s “unwritten restrictive covenant.”

We’re the same religion——one that’s not common here and one that has often been on the wrong side of restrictive covenants. I told them that. Old Pia would have run and called the painters: “paint it back to gray.” New Pia didn’t buy a house in a court that doesn’t have a home owner’s association or any rules to be told what to do.

My next door neighbors are both lawyers. I suppose they thought that I would bow down to their more educated status. My neighbor on the other side is a lawyer also. I care about his feelings as he lives here all year and we take out each others garbage and do other neighborly things. He loves it. But I felt so guilty. As if I had committed a sin.

The house came out gorgeous. I was in a better mood.But much, not great, is going on in my life. I still felt out of sorts.

Then the cable guy came to fix my TV and ever since then my gmail account’s been suspended. I don’t know about you but my life is in that account. Fortunately I have back ups of most documents. Unfortunately I don’t have another account with everybody’s email address in it. Fortunately I keep in touch with most people through text or Facebook. I sort of know somebody real high up at Google. I was going to call him.

Then Boston happened. I am a  New Yorker who once had a very different life. It changed after 9/11. I lived in Cambridge and Boston for several years when I went to Boston University and worked on Boylston Street just a few blocks from today’s attack.

Once more my feelings changed. I’m sad——very sad. And I want my gmail account back!