the 4pm blues

lunargirl27

I’m having one of those late afternoons where I don’t want to be alive. (Just an FYI, there’s never any danger of me hurting myself or acting on this feeling. I don’t want to alarm loved ones). It may just be because I feel, in all sense of the word, burnt out.

The day started out well enough. I finished a poem I had put away for about a year. I’d been working on it the last three days. This morning in bed, after journaling a bit, I had this itching need to pick up the latest version and tinker. Tinker I did. After an hour (I’d given myself fifteen minutes) I read it aloud and knew. Maybe a word change here or there, but by god it was finished. In fact, I was going to post the “final” version on here today.

But right now the poem doesn’t seem to matter. Isn’t it funny how what we give meaning to in any given moment can shift like that? I suppose that isn’t true for the big things (wish I could think of a smart example here). But for the day-to-day details, the nit picky stressors and “problems”, how important we believe something to be (negative or positive), changes (or it can, anyway). It all changes. We change. Yet everything underneath is exactly the way it was before. Or something like that.

Instead of the poem, which perhaps I will include later this week, I’m going to post what I wrote this morning in my journal. I feel like it’s the truest thing I can say right now. I will forgo the “need” to edit and tinker and just let it be:

Leaving within the hour to see dad. I just got off the phone with him. He could barely hear a thing I said. To be patient it helps to be well rested. I’ll just leave it at that.

I decided to go ahead and go to the recovery retreat this weekend. There are plenty of reasons not to go, I don’t need to list them. But of course, as good a one as any is the possibility of seeing my ex.

At any rate, Minnie is with Lisa, I’m leaving at 10:45ish to visit with dad and am shooting to pick up my friend for the retreat at 5pm. I have a doc appointment at 2pm. I’m a little stressed out which is why it is ESSENTIAL I take this time and write. The ticking clock is driving me crazy (I struggled with taking out the battery but the damn hatch won’t open). I can’t decide whether or not to take a shower now or later. I don’t know how next week is going to work out with me going to MD on Thursday. If this hearing loss doesn’t get figured out soon…

But I didn’t know how shit would get resolved this past week either and look- here I am. Everything is being taken care of; everything is being worked out.

It’s easier to feel stressed out about all this than to think about seeing dad today. He looks so thin in the pictures my mom’s sent me, thin and toothless. It’s not like he’s had many teeth these last few years, and he’s never worn dentures, but somehow he looks, and speaks, as if all his teeth are gone.

I’m scared to see him. It’s like he’s wasting away and I’m just watching because there’s nothing else I can do. I’m scared the emotion will come over me on my way home, on my way to see Dr. T. and I’ll be a mess for the rest of the day, and for rest of the weekend. Whenever I’m running from the experience of feeling something, just sitting my butt down in a meeting, that sensation of being in a circle among people who get it, my body’s ability to sigh out a breath, causes the tears to immediately rise up in me and spill.

I’m scared the whole weekend is going to be like this- just one big mess of feeling. I suppose if that’s what needs to happen, that will happen. And if my ex is there to see it, so be it. Fuck it.

I’m looking around at the physical mess in my room and it just amplifies the chaos I feel in my head. I imagine the debris of my shitty thinking and anxiety settling, that heavy rusted metal of self-doubt and self-loathing, sinking, and as things still, as I become still, the sediment shifts, tiny grains of sand move and make room, and everything I don’t need settles to the gritty bottom. I am left with a salty ocean of calm; the clarity that comes from opening my eyes and looking under water despite my fear…

Here’s what I know: when I feel as listless as I do now, when exhaustion feels like hopelessness, I need to lie down and close my eyes. Sometimes I confuse extreme fatigue with depression. (When the fatigue follows me around day after day, this feeling becomes real). I’m sure all is lost, and so I wrap the heavy cloak of despair around me. But in that moment of not-wanting-to-be-alive-anymore all I really need to do is to get into bed, put some pillows beneath my knees, nestle the eye pillow so it rests over my tired eyes, and breathe. There could not be a more simple solution. I don’t even have to use all those pillows. And yet here I am, still fighting it as I write these words.

Okay, here’s what I promise: after I finish here to get in bed and do exactly what I described above. In all honesty, I can promise five minutes but no more.

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Published by lunargirl27

I am a writer and an artist, a teacher and a swing dancer (and a lover of all dancing); a woman who loves to dig in the dirt, talk to the flowers and sleep with the trees. I am an eternal student. Though I consider myself an introvert, my passion is finding true connection with others. I have lived with life-long chronic illness, and continue to struggle both with physical health issues, and bouts of depression and anxiety, sometimes debilitating. I am still reconciling my past with its effect on my present; learning to love the little girl who is still me, the one who carries our trauma. And I am finally, FINALLY, starting to know what loving myself actually feels like (less like an article in a self-help magazine, more like a loving expansiveness of self and a union with others. I don't like that description at all, but for now I'll let it be. This will kill my perfectionist). I'm here because I want to share my experience, strength, and hope. Not because I want to save or fix you, but because I hope you will see a reflection of your own strength and ability to heal in my words. The bad news is that no one will do this hard, at times painful, self-exploratory work for you. It's a humbling process. The good news is that you are capable of seeking help, and you deserve the love, support, and understanding that will help you heal. I acknowledge here, my privilege of having access to emotional support resources. I know I am one of the lucky ones. Though we cannot see each other, I know a little piece of you, just as you know a little piece of me. Our stories may be different, but we understand a shared pain. Though the specifics belong to each of us alone, our healing comes from also being able to see the similarities. This is how we break out of our isolation. And even if none of this helps you, maybe something here will lead you to a path that can offer you some hope and healing. Reach out anytime, I would love to hear from you.

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