Monday, September 28, 2015

The Shadow

Sometimes that dark thing, that shadow, rises up in me.  Sometimes it is swift, obvious, and debilitating.  Sometimes it creeps, slowly taking over every rational thought, each ray of light, all hope.

I keep thinking that, as circumstances change, things will change.  I will change.  Somehow, I always forget that I am always me deep down.  Suddenly, I have more time than ever to do the things I love and explore things I think I'd like.  Instead of contentment, I feel guilt.  I have a...I'm at a loss at what to call it because it doesn't feel like what it should...a business?  Career?  Calling, perhaps?  Yet, I still feel like a failure of a partner to my husband, a bad example of a human to my children, and a fraud to the rest of the world that has known me.  I have these big ideas that burst into my consciousness only to find that I am incapable of follow through.  I want so badly to create something, to inspire, but the impulse flickers on and off like a light in a storm.

I can't seem to do small, so everything in my mind is huge.  Failures.  Obligations.  Disappointment.  Regret.  FEAR.  Sadness.  Deep, deep discontent.  A desperate desire to find a quiet place for my mind and my self-criticisms to rest.

Every night I go to sleep with ghosts.  Every morning I wake with the best intentions, only to find that dark days follow dark dreams.  I sit, glassy eyed, wishing I could do one of the thousand things I feel like I should do, trying to remember what it is I like to do.  I go outside and feel the sunshine and breeze on my face and feel alive for just a moment and then the sensation fades, so I go back into hiding.

What I know now that I didn't know then is that there is a deep, burning inside me that is stronger than the darkness that surrounds it.  Honestly, it's almost harder this way than it was when I felt truly hopeless.  I recognize what is lost and what there is to lose.  Instead of being overwhelmed with it all at once, my heart feels each individual ache.  It's excruciating, paralyzing, but not numbing.  Not this time.  Not yet.