going postal

remember that phrase? seen the news about folks who go ballistic and shoot up their workplaces, coworkers, fellow students or family? know people who say “i don’t know what they were thinking!”? ever watched a movie about those poor souls who look over the orange-hued edge of a bridge to the choppy water below and think: yeah, that looks ok. maybe you’ve even said to yourself “it’s pretty bad, but i’d never!”

i have a new perspective on that. and it’s not even a complete view. just one woman’s shallow look into and experience with the every woman’s depression.

and it is lonely. surrounded by crowds of well-intentioned individuals who only want the best is a little person who can still look at that bottle of tequila or the water below and not see a single reason why they should say no. so they don’t.

it seems so easy when you are on the other side of baseless sorrow, or even reasoned sorrow. you know, from experience, that there is a way through, there is a light at the other end. but living in that dark place, where it seems there will never be a reason to smile again, it is not so cut and dried. even if the day before you had a moment of levity, a precious hour of actual life, the next there doesn’t seem any end to the darkness and worse there doesn’t seem to be a path out.

the sharp pain of tears and dehydration become your only companions, the only source of comfort. long nights sleeplessly twisted in bedsheets while the errors of the day, the day before, years before, tortures you with certain proof that you are in fact useless and replaceable. probably replaced already.

doesn’t seem to matter what the cause is; once the red sea of worthlessness opens all you can do is stand ankle-deep in the mucky bottom hoping the waves will end the pain soon. or not. when you’re just waiting it doesn’t seem to matter much either way.

get some exercise, pull your self up by your bootstraps. that’s the advice you hear. it does feel like you should be able to shake it off. so you grasp those straps and they cut into your fingers like senseless barbs but all you see is smooth leather lying in your hands. leather that once brought you pleasure. this is a reality that is hard to shake. this is a hard reality to understand. with so much to love and appreciate in the world, how can a person not find something to value?

it’s frighteningly easy.

i have no advice on how to help. maybe listen, listen and do not judge. accept what is said and just hold it. push for help, but please push gently. the edge is jagged and the bottom far away, but it can be far more enticing than you imagine. but do push.

and maybe stir an anti-depressant into the coffee.

wink and a nod

a person’s depressed, already exhibiting poor judgment, insomnia and entertaining suicidal thoughts. so an antidepressant is prescribed that can increase these symptoms as well as add nausea and dizziness.

and for the insomnia? here’s a bottle of sleeping pills. use wisely.

everything i thought it could be and more

excruciating pain, mind-numbing pleasure and about fifteen POPS as bits of me where stretched in ways i didn’t know possible.

therapeutic thai massage. you need to go get one.

i’ll bet these folks could kill with their bare hands without even thinking about it. i was so relaxed i wouldn’t have cared. what an experience. i don’t know where to start. the incredible feeling of trusting a stranger with hands as strong as silk cables to contort my body at will? the sensual pleasure of lying in artificial twilight next to a babbling brook on a divan wreathed by some mysterious relaxing thai incense? my wobbly-relaxed legs and their near inability to function after?

maybe i should begin with how incredible it was to lie for an entire hour with no expectations: no wondering what’s going to happen next, what am i doing with my life and how does it make me feel. suspended in time and space while this tiny little woman manipulated every muscle in my body, sharing such close physical contact with another human in so indescribable a way, it was, dare i say, spiritual.

if you are a mother, if you survived the holidays, if you are perpetually sick and in hospital, if you hurt in any way, if traffic seems too busy and intrusive, if it’s monday, you need to have a thai massage. go.