Flat Line

Here's something very true about me:  I may have a lot of failings, but being fake is not one of them.   No, I am a genuine article.  With me, most of the time what you see is what you get, because what I've got is what you see.  I'm transparent that way, not very good at smiling outside when I feel like crying inside.  I'm not sure if the internet is the best place to be so, but that's how I am.

Why did I ever write (semi) publicly that I had been happy for so long?  Yesterday, I read someone else's good news and instantly fell into an emotional hole that I've not entirely climbed out of.  Well, I've climbed out, but I'm still tender and wary.  The instant depression is still with me like a bad taste in my mouth that won't go away.

It's hard to explain how people like me--at least my family members, I've seen them do it--can drop instantly into an alternate interpretation of the world that darkens their eyes and hardens their hearts and curls their lips.  And I should stop using the plural pronoun now, because it's all me this time.

Years ago, I tried to write the experience into a poem (never finished).  I called it Avalanching because that's what the momentum is like.  One small thought starts rolling and gathers feelings like dirty snow with frightening speed until I'm buried in them.  I can dig out intellectually these days, but the feeling lingers on.  I know that the negative spin on the universe is not true, BUT THAT DOES NOT CHANGE THE WAY I FEEL.  The whole experience is exceedingly mystifying and unnecessary, but absolutely real--and terribly stubborn.

So that's where I am on the landscape, a barren flat place with a memory of the sunny hilltop I inhabited just yesterday morning, just 30 seconds before the bottom fell out. I know that it will pass eventually.  I'm still hoping for a new rule, still praying that this is now the exception.

I don't feed this wolf any more.  Surely he'll tire soon. What I felt like doing yesterday was sitting and staring with a mouth like a flat line.  Instead, I painted a little something in the house, did a good deed for someone else, worked on a project for the job I feel lucky to have, and cooked a good dinner (Indian food, yum).  I don't know what else to do but accept that I don't get to feel happy right now, and believe that I will again soon.  Especially when I'm around other people again.  That always helps.  I suspect that people think I am a happy person because of their own buoying effect on me.

When this happens, I don't know what else to do but go forward doing what needs to be done and what seems wise to do.  Forward is the only way to go, the only way worth going.

Life is good.  I will be so glad to feel it fully again. Until then, I wrote the next post anyway.