“I shut and locked the front door
No way in or out
I turned and walked the hallways
And pulled the curtains down
yeah I knelt and emptied the mouths of every plug around …
I’m in hiding …”
-Pearl Jam, In Hiding.
I am a man adrift on a raft on a sea of my Major Depression management.
It’s funny – I totally believe in medication – prescribed and administered properly.
God knows it’s helped me. But it’s never a cure-all. There’s a mental health saying that goes, “recovery never happens in a straight line.” And it’s true.
I know I’ve gotten better.
I feel it.
My psychiatrist told me he wasn’t worried about me anymore – and that was months ago I’m done grieving – both for my father’s passing away and my breakup.
So I’m feeling a strange kind of numbness.My emotional state goes from numb to even to content.
However, setbacks – predominately at work – really do set me back. I still feel the gravitational lethargic pull to my bed, to fall in, stay, and disappear.
One day I took off from work, I stayed in bed for most of the day. The following day as well. I recover back to neutral.
I go on.
I’ve isolated myself.
People and their problems were too much for me.
I had kind of lost myself in trying to be available to help others – as a way of avoiding my own problems, but also as a way of doing penance for the wrongs I’ve caused others. But people are people, and they’ll do whatever they’re driven to do anyway.
I did.
So I cut off everybody and cocooned myself.
I’d sit outside, smoke my pipe, and think. Sometimes listen to music. Often without, instead listening to the sigh and sway of The Three Sisters.
It’s calming.
Now the school year’s ending.Summer’s coming.
Summer’s coming.
I can feel it.
I’m getting restless.
My energy is coming back, now that it is not 100% focused on my students.
Another change comes with it.
And who I will be after that, who can say?
I just ride the ocean tides.
marcwritesmoorewords 