I recently went looking back through my blog archives, just a quick stroll down memory lane if you will. It's a fun way to reminisce, sort of like literary photos of times long since passed. I purposely clicked on the months from this past summer to see what I had said about the sad life I was living at the time. I was surprised by what I saw. For someone who spent the better part of June through August crying uncontrollably at random moments, my blog looked suprisingly happy and chipper, like that of a relatively well-adjusted twenty-something in New York. Granted, the average posting was less in number then the months before or certianly now, but the tone never really changed. Occasionally I mentioned some of the general cruminess that threatened to drown me like an oversized turtleneck, but for the most part, perhaps on purpose, I neglected to admit to the world, and to myself the truth.
This past summer, though sprinkled with amazing events like weddings, fireworks and my 24th birthday was easily the darkest time of my life. I spent my days going through the motions, being thankful that in the chaos I hadn't forgotten how to breath, or at least my body understood the necessity without me having to consciously decide that it needed to be done. I spent a lot of time alone...struggling to remember that the friends I had did love me, even though I wasn't sure if that love was enough. I lived off of tuna and macaroni and cheese and slept on a mattress I had to re-inflate every week in a room full of boxes left unpacked, because there was no where for anything to go, in a room with no air condtioning, just the whir of a fan to drown out the passing cars. I had no furniture, no money, nothing really. Just some good people who didn't give up on me, even when I was pretty close to giving up on myself. Those people know who they are, the ones who let me call at random times and cry, becuase it was the only emotion I had keft that I knew how to work with. They let me have good, cleansing cries and listened and reassured from thousands of miles away...and I am stronger because of them. The ones closer to home, the ones that matter, didn't give up on me either and kept on squeezing when I tried so hard to push them away...they too kept me afloat. It's funny really, I think I never wrote about it because if I didn't say it out loud, didn't share that part with the world, then maybe it wasn't true, maybe the saddness wouldn't catch me and take my breath away in the middle of a Village street and turn everything blurry behind my tears. Maybe if I didn't talk about it, I was the strong one, somehow taking control over whatever it was that had taken control over me. Depression is a mean, unkind, overwhelming bitch of a beast. I fear her more now than ever before, I know what she can do.
And here I am now, a few months later...a whole lot stronger. When things started to look up in the early fall I had never been so happy to me, again, after having lost myslef for so long, it all felt just a little sweeter. And now with the holidays settling in, the cold can't suffocate the joy that I hold inside, a joy that finally can outshine the sadness. I've spent my whole life trying to be strong enough to own up to the truth, to admit to the world, and to myself, that the things that happen to me, controllable or not, are nothing to be ashamed of, to deny, because in denying those things I am denying who I really am. I am a big ball of contradictions: fiercely independent and utterly dependent, in control and at a loss, courageous and fearful; a complexity of self identity even I have yet to fully understand. But I sit here now, more humbled than ever, sure that there exists a master plan...one that requires succeeding in battles you often wish never had to be fought. But still I go on, choosing to fight and stay in the game, trying to be honest with myself no matter what. An always reminding myself that it's okay to tell the truth...
