Juxtaposition

These past few weeks, I have been living in a state of juxtaposition, which is a really cool and appropriate word meaning the act or placement of two things, usually abstract concepts, next to each other.  It's a mouthful, right?  It's a head-full too.  I can hardly wrap mine around the juxtaposition of my present life.  Today, I feel as though I have been thawing from a frozen state and my limbs, and more importantly my mind, are coming back to life slowly.  Too slowly.

I have all of these wonderful things in my life today.  I have a family that supports me.  I have a husband who stands by me, quietly, but here not making demands, not asking too hard questions, and not judging me.  I have two children with whom my relationship has blossomed since I'm getting better.  They want to be near me just to feel me close to them and their easy joy is my joy.  I have extended family who check in, hug me, know without me having to say so.  I have wonderful, wonderful friends who, in their varying states of understanding, are simply there for me, no questions.  I have a comfortable home and a comfortable life.  I have laughed more in the past few weeks than I laughed in the last year.  I have felt more in the last few weeks that I have in the past year.

Therein lies the juxtaposition.  I do not understand how this content happiness can live alongside the debilitating fear, the deep, all-consuming sadness.  I am so worried that the answer is that they cannot and that the fear, the sadness, will take over again.  Because I am more alive than I have been in so long, I am doing more to focus on the good, but so much of that effort is spent subduing the terror that wells, rather than existing in a positive place.  That fight, that juxtaposition, saps the happiness I can find and brings back the disquiet, the sad, in my soul that I thought was waning.

It's so hard to get better when the ugliness inside is stronger than the beauty.