Monday, October 28, 2013

ebbs and flows

Life is full of ebbs and flows.  Jolts and lurches forward.  Screeching stops and gradual accelerations.  Depression, mental illness for that matter, is really not very different.

When I'm at my worst, it's usually because I'm dealing with a perfect storm, and I've forgotten in the midst of trying to balance a million fire balls in mid air, to take a breath, take meds, do yoga or invest in the silencing of my brain.  And when I'm sniping and snapping at the smallest things, and I can even feel my face showing complete and utter disgust in the world, what hurts the most is knowing that the recipients of my ire and the pain and despondency of no hope are all in my own head and are at that moment, uncontrolled.  I had a moment like that briefly yesterday.  We've all been sick, and stressed and running a mile a minute and when we went to my mom's for dinner yesterday I struggled to lug all our crap into the house, had to call my husband back to help me heave crap in, then couldn't get in the door without fighting a million hurdles and it just felt like I was trying to navigate a medieval gauntlet from hell.  "Jesus H Christ!" I snarked.  "One of you kids come and deal with this ball!  Get it out of the road!"  I looked up to see my mother and my step brother looking at me like I'd walked into the room breathing fire.  I wasn't, but that's how it came out.  I was mildly frustrated, but at the brink of my perfect storm, that's how I look to the world at large.  Mild frustrations are treacherous climbs the likes of Mount Everest.  And a smile looks like Satan has usurped my body for his own and my possessed spirit is seething it's disdain.

If I could change these moments, you best believe that in a New York City second I would change them.  I'd do a 180, slap a happy ass smile on my face and act like I'd just been through the sexcapades and taken home the bronze, (cuz you know if you win the gold you were trying too hard to have any fun).  And I'd give absolutely anything not to let my daughter or my husband see or feel them.  It breaks my heart when those moments overtake me - for that reason more than any other.  I'm living with the knowledge that my child will have to say one day "there was a time when I didn't know what would greet me when I got home.  My mom or the evil doctor inside her."

But the moments of happy are sheer, exquisite joy.  That's the trade off.  You can never be normal - well I can't.  And that's probably because there is no such thing as normal.  But you can be your best sometimes, and you can value that above everything else, because that's what separates us from the beasts inside us.  And while you live with the moments where your body feels like it's going to explode into a million little bits and with their own wings, fly away so you can never put them back in place...you can let one little teeny weenie tiny voice in the back of your mind, shout out as loud as it can that it will all be better in the morning.  A good sleep, and some peaceful quiet will help you to put the pieces of you back together, and you will have a better day tomorrow if you just persevere through this one.

Even Wil Wheaton knows what that's like.  It just gets better.

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