life collection

I cannot stop crying today. I'm just sad. Like real sad. Not depressed sad, which is more of a blank feeling. But sad sad, where I feel my heart is full of a heavy mournful mess. I also know my period is coming which gives me crazy mood swings and crying spells.

It doesn't help that last night as we installed our new dishwasher (which is awesome by the way), I clunked my head on our heavy porcelain farmhouse sink...again! This is the same sink that gave me a concussion on my birthday in January...yeah, that thing is dangerous! My head is still killing me and I feel like my right eye is rolled inside my head. I don't know how to explain it, but moving my eye hurts a lot.

We have had a rain storm for that past few days, it's been pretty windy and autumn leaves are flying through the sky in packs. This made me really sad as I realized I don't even feel like it is autumn yet. The seasons are very important to me, I am terribly sentimental and I remember so many things about each season that has passed. I love the holidays, I love autumn and winter. Usually I get a bounce in my step and a glimmer of hope that things will be better. I get super creative and want to write and walk outside all bundled up just to feel the crispy cold snap. But not this year. Not last year either. My heart is out of it and I don't know what to do other than to feel disappointed.

I can go through the motions, but that doesn't mean I feel it, that doesn't mean it is real for me. And that whole "fake it 'til you make it" bit is a load of shit. I've been doing that for years (a.k.a my entire life) and all I am doing is being fake.

The problem is if I'm not fake I'm nothing. There is no realness I am hiding, I feel blank and if I was just 'real' I would lay in bed and stare at the ceiling probably until I died. Or I would freak out and try to kill myself. So I have to fake it, fake it keeps me alive.

But it also makes me entirely too sad. The thing is when you have severe depression that isn't responding to treatment you have to just keep. You have to freeze yourself, dumb it down, push through like a football player. If you don't you die. If I don't I die.

A week before Christmas last year was when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It was more of a relief than anything else, since I had spent the whole year going to doctor upon doctor trying to explain to them that the physical pain and fatigue I felt was real. It was a battle. But then I had it--the diagnoses I had been looking for. And then it was real. And then it existed. And I new it was chronic. And it is all in my head, but that can't be helped.

The depression and chronic pain in my life are very real. Like palpable. Like day and night, second by second. The eight pillows I use in bed tell me. The aching arms and legs no matter what. The way I stare at my razor. This all makes it real.

Sometimes that is all the real I have. My only truth. I am sick. Then I remember Ronald B. Gantt. Cricket, Isabelle, Amelia. Our house. My in-laws. Sisters. My nephews and Niece. Our bed. flowers. The leaves outside that don't feel real (but are). Warm fires at night. My psychiatrist who actually gives a shit. The mourning doves that live all around us, and the one hawk that hangs on the light post outside.

Then my foot cramps up and I have a leg spasm. And all the bad comes back. But there is good there too. I wouldn't say there is a way out. I would say there is a way along with it.

So I keep going hem-haw-hem-haw, oi-moi, and all. But it's something. Even if it's bad, it's something.

xx, C

p.s.-- I didn't intend for this to be a super deep/sad post, it just kind of happened. ;)