Wouldn't it be great if you could just smear something on yourself and start over from scratch?

Something is wrong with me, and if there's a psychologist or psychiatrist reading this right now, I'd appreciate a diagnosis.

For as long as I can remember, I couldn't bear making mistakes. Do you know what a shape sorter is? The thing you give to an infant with shapes and shape-sized holes into which you're supposed to put them? Well, as an infant, I would throw it across the room when I put the wrong shape in the wrong hole. My mother says it was quite startling, because in general I was an easy-going, happy baby who never made a fuss.

Then, when I was older, I would immediately abandon a page in the coloring book when I colored outside the lines. My life was full of half-finished pages in half-finished coloring books.

I LOVED the start of school. It meant a fresh start. Up until the day I forgot an assignment, got a bad grade, or some other mishap -- then I hated school and wished I could stay home every day. I would lay awake for hours and hours dreading the next school day.

It would get quite self-destructive. In high school chemistry class, for example, I failed to turn in a lab. So I didn't turn in another lab. Ever. It was the same with math; if I missed a homework assignment, I gave up. What was the point? My record was ruined.

I hated when the mail man would walk across the snow-covered lawn, marring it with his dirty boot prints.

I still battle this tendency to this day. When we were first married, I would withdraw from Dilf after the mildest of disagreements -- to my mind, I was "ruined" in his eyes, and it was all downhill from there. I was mentally barricading myself against an imaginary enemy that didn't exist.

I'm better about that, I think (right, Dilf?), but my brain can still paralyze me. A sink full of dirty dishes and a dishwasher full of clean ones, for example, puts my stomach in knots. I hate the dirty dishes! I want them gone! But those clean dishes are in the way... it just seems overwhelmingly complicated to my brain and it freezes up. I'm fine once I get started, but it's hard for me to GET started.

It's not laziness; I want to do the work. I stare at the work, willing myself to do it. I'm not doing anything else more fun or interesting.

It's not a dislike of the chore itself; I love cleaning. And organizing. And conquering chaos.

So, what is it? What makes it so difficult to start? I want to start. Why can't I?

When I was younger, I used to think I had a brain tumor or some other disease that kept my body frozen in place while my mind was urging, "Come on! Do it! Move!" Now, I don't think it's that dire, but I still don't know what the hell's wrong with me.

I'm starting to feel this way about blogging. It's not good enough. I want to start over from scratch, with a new pseudonym, because of yesterday. I still think the premise of reassuring lonely bloggers that people read and appreciate their stuff is a good one. But not if they feel attacked. I don't like that I was part of a bad thing. And I want to erase it.