***This is the original post on Facebook I spoke about yesterday in the post titled " If wishes were horses..." I am posting it today so you have a frame of reference. It was written on January 6th, 2011.***
It feels like walking through mud. I don’t mean that I can’t breathe. I can. I am. But the days move in slow motion. I can count the years between the seconds that click on the red hand circling the clock on the wall. And the stories that find their way into that time leave me reeling, and exhausted, and heavy.
This is not classic depression. No rocking in the corner. No bingeing. No night sweats. On the contrary, I am sleeping fine. I am dreaming, if you can call it that. The same dream. At least it has the same feeling when I wake up. I have had this dream before, known this feeling before. And it aches. Aches somewhere. I can’t pinpoint it. I would massage it out if I could just find the source. I wish I could remember the details, or the people in it. I think there are people in it, though I cannot be sure. I never see the faces when I wake up.
I laugh with my children. I write. I go to work. I eat. I exercise. I see my friends, and laugh with them, too. I play loud games of checkers, never backing down on the cut-throat action-packed maneuvers my 7 year old throws at me. His smile and snort makes me warm. My 8 year old looks on, rolls her eyes at our silliness, and cuddles up on my lap anyway. When did she get this big? I don’t remember. Yes I do. I remember every minute. Her need to stay small warms me, too.
So why the mud? I move. I am moving. I can move. When I said I am breathing, I don’t mean deeply. I breathe on the surface. Enough for inertia, to take the next step. But breathing deep would mean exhaling deep, too. The surface around me might crush me if I let too much air out. Not like a crushing blow that comes in once, blind-sides me, flattens me in an instant. Those, well, those I can stand up from. Recover from. Dust off from. The slow steady crush of the mud around me, creeping in, filling my pores, caking my hair, collecting under my nails, filling my shoes. Am I wearing shoes? I forgot that I had shoes on. They are heavy. I should take them off.
That didn’t answer it, did it? I don’t know why the mud is here. Yes, I do, but it surrounds me like a blanket and protects me and ….
I am tired. Exhausted. And the tears on my cheeks only make the mud stick more.
