It's happening again.

i thought this time would be different. i thought that being stronger would also entail being more or less immune to it. i thought that being wiser would also spare me from a considerable amount of what i am experiencing now... something i'm embarrassed to call pain or suffering, because it sounds all too dramatic....
if not anything else, i will at least have to admit to myself that I am experiencing deep sadness and "emotional fatigue"... it's something more or less similar to what happens to machines when they've been used for a long time, not given enough care and provided proper maintenance, and they eventually break down when you least expect them to. in their case it is called "structural fatigue" and it actually starts with small cracks in the material . in the case of "emotional fatigue", it begins with the person accepting small abnormal emotions and reactions as being "normal", putting up with them as well as he or she can... until, one day, some mysterious alarm system goes on, letting that person know that the "cracks" are not normal, and might lead (if it's not too late already) to break-down and shut-down...
nasty, right? no one would want to get there. that's why friends are so valuable help. because they maintain a sound "structure" (or at least have different "cracks") and trigger the alarm system from the outside, and they often do it in due time so that the person suffering from them can wake up and start fixing the problems. so having friends is like having a complex troubleshooting system always at hand. that is one of the nicest things life has to offer.
however, the other important issue, once you've spotted problems, is to have them fix. any good mechanic will tell you that in such cases there are basically two main things to do. one is to remove whatever might have been causing the problems (even change working conditions, if needed). the other is to become aware of the needs of the machine in terms of care and maintenance, and start fulfilling them. if additional or professional help is required, the good mechanic will also take his machine to a specialized service....
the human and emotional equivalent of this would be: one, to get away from the environment and person or persons who have caused the "cracks" in the first place. ideally, you could try to talk to them (human beings, unlike objective work conditions, can be reasonably talked into changing their behavior) to improve the emotional environment without actually leaving that person. second, you need to start taking proper care of yourself and your emotional needs, and set a more or less flexible scale not of what is "normal" but what is "safely acceptable from an emotional point of view" (which would roughly define as "an emotion that does not endanger your mental health or sanity"). last, "if additional or professional help is required", you should not be embarrassed to seek it and ask for it from a good friend or a psychologist.
now where do I fit in all this story?
well, you could think of me as of a mechanic who loves his "working conditions" as much as he loves his "machine". and after several alarm signals, in spite of the machine telling him things are terribly wrong and need to change, the mechanic goes on trying to improve the working conditions rather than taking his machine to a different environment. what is worse, this mechanic (who's not very sane himself, if you think about it!), uses ALL his energy on the work conditions, so nothing is left for what should be the second stage: taking care of his most precious belonging. the consequences ?.... you can tell for yourself!