July 4th, 2013

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
                                                      -T. A. Edison

Driving home is always the hardest. 

The drive home is when my mind starts to torture me. The drive home is when the demons start their shift.

If anything dealing with this sickness has taught me over the years, it's how to appreciate the pure moment. The minute that I'm actually glad to be alive. A variable amount of seconds where I get an armistice. 

Being at the point where I can be out with good friends and appreciate the holiday. Feeling alive in that minute. Just taking a breath and heightening your senses to everything that's around you. I feel the cool breeze rush past the hairs on my legs. I smell the residue of Chinese manufactured recreational explosives in the air. Grateful for the kids laughing and screeching twenty yards away. Actually happy that I can feel like mosquito crawling on my arm; actually smiling when I feel the slap of my hand ending said mosquito's pub crawl. Alive. Living. Breathing.

Have you had that? Have you had a mosquito make you feel like you were actually supposed to be alive, standing where you are, when you are, who you are. A mosquito... that's nuts.

I take this time to appreciate the moment, because I know... I know that it's not going to last. Armistice Day is over.

It's time for the drive home.

Driving away from a get together with friends has always been a somber experience for me. A finishing of a paragraph. The period of the sentence. There may be many many more pages; but I can't read them yet. They haven't been published. This is when my guard is down and I start to become vulnerable to the Black Dog.

No light without darkness they say. This is the way the universe works. Initially I'm happy. I think of her looking at the same sky I'm looking at. I think of the laughs she's probably having with her friends and the happiness that she's beeming with. The thoughts quickly turn for worse, in true self-defeating fashion. Some other lucky guy has his arms around her. Some other guy (in my mind sexier, smarter, faster, stronger, better looking, more manly, etc.) is sharing a blanket with her somewhere much nicer with a better view. This all may be fiction. This all may be a yarn. I can pull every scientific and rational thinking atom in my mass to try and believe this; and still assume the worst. 

Part of me is truly happy. I'm trying to let go. I'm trying to be over it. I'm trying to give up.

This is when I start hating that I can feel. I hate the feeling in my gut. I hate the butterflies in my stomach. I hate my grip on the wheel. I hate the oncoming lights; this stupid music I'm listening to. Each note becomes sour and jaded. Tiresome to enjoy. Boring. This is the moment when I become aware that I'm losing the good and allowing the bad to rush in.

Driving home is always the hardest.

I talk a lot about that feeling, that gut feeling. I know I'm supposed to listen to it. Just like you'd run from a T-Rex. You're coded to not want to be eaten alive by Sue. So you run. I'm coded to chase, to not give up on this gut feeling. Since I've never felt this deeply before- I'm torn between what is 'depression' and what is 'heartbreak' and if they're even distinguishable from each other. The line is blurry and I can't see the separation. One fuels the other.

Churchill doesn't play fair. That's what I've decided to call the Dog, by the way. He sabotages my logical thinking. He allows me to think I'm obsessive, hopeless, fanatical, insane. We all have the voice of right and wrong in our head. We all have a moral compass. Mine are just yelling at each other right now. Like a brother and sister in the back of the station wagon on a long road trip across a state with nothing to see (looking at you Wyoming.) They bicker back and forth for stupid reasons. 

"Quit poking each other!"

Doesn't matter. I can't just leave them at the side of the road, as much as I may want to.