I keep my prayers simple these days:
Anywhere but here.
Anyone but me.
Traditionally, I suppose, this would the point at which I tell you that my break involved actual rest and recuperation. That it did me good and I got my head together and all is, relatively, sunny side-up. I did and it is because I’m not precisely unhappy. No, not precisely.
But I’m not happy either. I’m somewhere in the vicinity of managing. There are, of course, great moments and utterly devastating ones and in between I feel like I’m stuck in a bad prison movie. I’m scared of dropping the soap.
Is this my version of stability? To teeter on a relatively safe brink, dangle my legs in the water each morning and hope against hope that somehow, someway the cumulative total of my life no longer adds up to misery, on the whole? That the rush of that ocean of disjointed suffering too deep to measure has, finally, been taken to another shore?
But I’m no Houdini. There are rarely any tricks left in my arsenal except getting up and doing as I do each and everyday.
That’s the reality of using your Hail Mary passes – you get through the danger zone and then…
And then. And then.
Because it really doesn’t matter what comes after that in the story. All that matters is that it comes. Good, bad, indifferent it’s still something where there might only have been a void. Often enough still is.
Life shouldn’t be zero-sum but when it’s you versus Depression then it has to be. Win or lose, give or take. These are the options.
Depression may seem like a grey all-consuming fog but that’s its cover story. It’s a covert operative in a cold, cold war that goes on even though the players die a thousand deaths each night. You wake up and you start again, if luck and other, more mysterious things are on your side or close enough.
No matter how well-rendered, how monumentally pleasant or awful or awfully good yesterday was there is always the morning to come. There is always the moment when you must turn and face the truth, forever unlike any other. Forever disposable because it’s as unreliable as emotion ever is but still, I take comfort in the fact that it is there for the taking. Even if it’s only for a moment that moment might, just might be bright enough that I will wake in 3 days time and still be able to see the light it cast in an otherwise all too empty room.
So I set a lot of life on repeat – to be played with one hand behind my back. One hand that steadies me in the creeping darkness, a hand to hold in reserve my last full measure of devotion, one cup of faith or something resembling peace to fool myself in moments I should not, by rights, get through at all.
And then I damn all that well-intentioned hard, cold work. All that lamentable dedication to I know not what is swiftly exiled to places best unseen. I wipe the board of the pieces and I play it all out in my mind, clean and always 4 wild cards ahead.
Then I take back the night, stealing a few precious drops of quiet wonder, out of the jaws of almost being. And I use all I have come to long for to assuage the rampant hunger of my mind with whispered fever dreams of Sailing Ships and Ceiling Wax, of Cabbages and Kings. Of why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings…
Hmmm…This is a familiar place for me, too. There’s a wall I tend to hit on the road to recovery (I guess it’s technically dysthymia) and you describe it well here.
I suppose it is dysthymia though that may be giving it more credit than it really deserves because it’s such a floating almost non-state sometimes. But anyway, yes, a wall is a good way to describe it – or several. It seems to be like a ‘how many hurdles can you jump before breakfast?’ kind of thing.
You write beautifully.
“You wake up and you start again, if luck and other, more mysterious things are on your side or close enough”
How I know that feeling!
Lola
Thanks Lola!
Embrace your emotions, continue to seek to understand them. Never stop asking yourself why you are the way you are. Continue to cast yourself into the chaos that is life, for if it would kill you, you’d already be dead.
Every four days we are living in an entirely new body. Its built on the past, but there are always infinite possibilities for the future. Live in the reality of the now. The past only serves for information, it is fate, a static reality. The future has yet to happen, never fear it, embrace it as a gift. The now is where we exist, always. Doing always. Changing always. Affecting always.
Sounds like you’ve sort of found an unhappy truce of balance (sort of) with things as they are. Of course, you know that’s still not the status quo forever…all things being temporary and all…
Its this I fear too. Ongoing surprise attacks of Depression or PTSD, like the one that happened only too recently. And each time, sure, you learn more, but it never seems to be any easier… does it?
Oh those hurdles, and I so clumsy that I couldn’t jump them in PE class, let alone decades later in the privacy of my late night and early morning stumblings.
You describe things so well, which is what draws me to your blog.
Yes, no matter how yesterday unfolded there is always that next morning looming ahead, like a trap waiting to snare us. I’ve always hated mornings; I can’t seem to get my bearings as easily as others. Mornings seem like some kind of sick joke to me, one whose punchline I’m never gonna get, not in a zillion years.
Yet again, another fantastic and amazing post. I have no words to express my thoughts,I have no words to express my reactions, I only have a simple Thank You.
Good to see you’re back.
@magari – Don’t worry, I don’t think I could stop seeking if I wanted to. Though actually it’s every 7 years your body renews itself entirely but I certainly take your point.
I love the idea that the infinite plays such a crucial role in our lives. It’s a concept that has always fascinated me – both for its profound mathematical beauty and its potential.
@Svasti – Yes, I’ve entered a period of detente which will do, for now.
But no, it doesn’t seem to be any easier. In fact the surprise element sometimes trips me up harder than I ‘normally’ would’ve been. That sucks but I suppose at least it leaves room for being surprised by periods of brilliance as well.
@beauty – Cheers.
Your description of mornings is spot on! You know a psychiatrist I once had told me that the fact that I find mornings the hardest to handle strongly suggests a biological basis for the Depression. I think that’s a large part of why they seem to insurmountable.
We’re fighting nature at full force – like standing in front of a tornado and you can’t even delude yourself into thinking that running will get you out of its way in time.
@Lady P – You are most welcome =) I’m so glad it touched something in you. That’s the best part of writing.
@PA – Thanks! I’ve missed all this!