Did you miss me? I missed y’all. I’ve missed having this space to write in. Not that I have much to say. I just want to check that my writing muscles are still working. I’m leaving comments off for now, because I can’t face them, but all nice people should feel welcome to email me…
New Years is usually chock full of hopes and dreams and resolutions, but this time round I’ve been fighting back the tears. I just don’t feel like there’s anything to look forward to.
The past twenty-four hours have been nice though, I’ve been in the company of some of my favouritist people in the world… but I’ve also been aware of all the people I’ve lost touch with. I’ve been so damn lonely lately.
One of the (many) suckful things about depression is that it’s really really hard to reach out to anyone. You’re alone and scared but you just can’t face anyone. And if you do manage to reach out, or if someone reaches out to you… I always feel like all the energy has been sucked out of me, even opening my mouth to talk is hard, and I never have anything to say, because it’s too hard to get out and do anything that would be worth talking about. So I always feel like the worst company ever, and maybe I’m sucking the life out of the party and everyone just wishes I’d go home…
It also makes for tedious blogging.
If you’re thinking “here we go again”, well, so am I. For a while there I really thought I had the right cocktail of drugs and things were going to be ok. It’s devastating to feel the blackness surging back. I feel so tired, I don’t know how I can possibly keep my head above the surface this time. I can’t keep coming back to this place, every time it feels harder.
There’s always someone who will remind you that it could be worse and you should be grateful, which doesn’t help, it just makes you feel guilty as well, but yeah, it could be.
I only knew a couple of people who were in the tsunami-affected area, and they’re ok, so for me it’s one of those incomprehensible faraway things. I wish I could do something though. Well, I could give money, if I had any. Maybe next week… I help will be needed for some time to come…
I’d quote a poem at this point, but all my books are packed away in boxes, along with most of my life. So I’ll just recycle this passage from a picture book that I had when I was a kid. It used to scare the hell out of me… but this bit is nice.
Life is always stronger than death. Jiya will feel when he wakes that he can never be happy again. He will cry and cry and we must let him cry. But he cannot always cry. After a few days he will stop crying all the time. He will cry only part of the time. He will sit sad and quiet. We must allow him to be sad and we must not make him speak. But we will do our work and live as we always do. Then one day he will be hungry and he will eat something that his mother cooks, something special, and he will begin to feel better. He will not cry any more in the day time but only at night. We must let him cry at night. But all the time his body will be renewing itself. His blood flowing in his veins, his growing bones, his mind beginning to think again, will make him live.
“He cannot forget his father and mother and his brother!” Kino exclaimed.
“He cannot and he should not forget them,” Kino’s father said. “Just as he lived with them alive, he will live with them dead. Someday he will accept their death as part of his life. He will weep no more. He will carry them in his memory and his thoughts. His flesh and blood are part of them. So long as he is alive, they, too, will live in him. The big wave came, but it went away. The sun shines again, birds sing, and earth flowers. Look out over the sea now!”
Kino looked out the open door and he saw the ocean sparkling and smooth. The sky was blue again, a few clouds on the horizon were the only sign of what had passed.
- from The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck