Every now and again I start feeling like the suburban housewife gets thin and the neurotic young woman I used to be gets yanked into the spotlight. Not a place I like to be, unless it's completely under my control. These would be the same issues that lead me to snap at my husband, shrill at my daughter, and spend a lot of time staring at an empty computer screen.

How do you fight it? It's easy when everything happens on schedule as planned with few unexpected deviations to your day. When everything becomes dependent on the smooth transition from one activity to the next. One variation, one slip leads to another, the entire days plans fly out the window, and the next thing you know you're caught in the snowball slide from hell.

I still don't know the answers. I spent years in therapy, months in psychiatric hospitals. I've ignored it and dealt with it. I've sat awake at nights wrestling with the same questions that hit me in broad daylight. I don't know which is better.

Look at myself in the mirror in the morning. Who is going to win today? The housewife or the other one? Or will it be an even earlier version? A little girl still so scared she can't come out of her hidey hole?

Does more therapy help or does more chemical interference? Drug the problem and watch it go away? I wish it were that easy.