Some days are lucky, rippled with sweetness. Yesterday afternoon, me on the couch, a dog to either side, my 16-year-old son decompressing across the room, my husband working nearby … It was sweet proximity, availability, warmth. This morning, we are in a similar configuration, each working on our own stuff, each present. Here we are. We are alive and healthy, we are family, and there are others here and there, a small group, but existent and walking the earth.
At night when I can’t sleep, or when I wake up at some ridiculous time, barely post-midnight, I am thrust into my deepest anxieties. I envision a future completely alone, family dead, the boy (god willing) living his life to the fullest in the faraway. This night-thinking future is inevitable. Come daylight, it returns to mirage. But primal anxiety leaves its mark, its mood discolorations. My wellbeing is perpetually contused and tender.
I know enough of the signs to recognize depression. My energy levels are low, my sleep is shot. Sometimes I feel hopeless, worthless. I imagine the relief of death (without a desire to make that a reality). Getting stuff done is difficult. Some days are better, some worse. The feelings ratchet up over my work week as each day intensifies and emotions build up with no relief.
Then Friday arrives, a day when I don’t see clients. I start to decompress. I see more of my family. Sometimes sleep improves, sometimes it doesn’t. Other worries and meta-wounds emerge from my subconscious, friendships on the fritz, feelings of being unseen, unheard, unknown. By this time on Saturday, I’m a little more clear-headed, though so much remains to do.
I don’t want to do it. I want to return to the good parts of childhood, a slow afternoon and a good book, an expanse of future, a person in the kitchen making me dinner, a dog I don’t need to walk or feed lying across from me on the floor, brown eyes gazing into mine, and nothing is real, except for the things we don’t talk about, which, for a moment or two, my fingers against the dog’s fur, our expressions intent and serious, don’t exist.