May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I know. I'm late.

Years ago, I said to Dean how lucky we were that we have had no major health issues in our family. He looked at me blankly. It took me a few minutes to figure out what he meant-- at the time, I was having chronic migraines (according to my neurologist, more than 15 migraines a month="chronic"). For some reason I don't think of migraines as a health problem, they're just something I deal with. It hadn't even occurred to me that from the outside, chronic migraines would seem like a major health problem.

(The migraines are way better now-- I've had only two in the past month, and since I have meds that mean I can still be up and about while I have one, it's not a big deal anymore.)

But I've discovered a similar attitude in myself about mental health. I have intermittent draining-but-not-devastating depression. We've talked about that before. I also have problems with paranoia (more about that in a minute). But I've never thought of myself as someone with mental health issues. At all. Never crossed my mind.

But last month on Instagram, there were a zillion posts about May being Mental Health Awareness month, and people were posting about their mental health issues, and suddenly some of them sounded pretty familiar. OH. I guess I have mental health issues. And then suddenly, everywhere I turn I've encountered people, books, blog posts, and conversations about mental health. I'm trying to pay attention.

I seem to be immune from the national-level conspiracy obsessions (how in the world would Hillary have had time to run a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor while she was campaigning sixteen hours a day and was one of the most watched people on the planet? it doesn't even make sense) but I can drive myself pretty nuts with paranoia in my personal life.

Part of it stems from being A BIT hypersensitive-- a small unexpected reaction from one of my friends can lead to days of absolute certainty that I've offended her and now she's turning all our other friends against me. Dean has a new job as of a year and a half ago, and his enthusiasm and new-found absorption with his new responsibilities has on two different occasions led me to confront him with his supposed affair, because why else would he suddenly be so happy to go into the office on weekends? (and half-a-dozen other perceived certainties).

And I am not just suspicious. I am dead certain. To the point where I was already thinking about how we would tell the kids and where I would move and what furniture I would take with me. It's, if you'll pardon the colloquialism, CRAZY. I'm discovering that I'm a little nuts.

Hmmmmm. I haven't even made it to what I set out to say but this is already long and I have other things I need to do today. To be continued. Maybe. Do I even want to get into this? I will hit send before I have a chance to second guess.