Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Winter
Another cold front's coming, and it's going to get colder before it's over. Ray Bradbury talked about winter as a repeated theme in Something Wicked This Way Comes. I remember reading that book last year; it intrigued and terrified me.
Winter in Houston is like winter anywhere. You can feel it starting, but you don't know how cold it's going to get or when exactly it's going to end.
It can warm up for a couple of days. You might even feel a bit of relief when the cold breeze lets up, and you can step outside to shiver a little bit less. Only for the wind to come down again, or worse, rain. I haven't had one of those cold winter rains yet, but it's coming.
As for me, it's winter again. Not just outside, but inside. That season in your life where it's cold and dark, and you pray the Groundhog won't see it's shadow and hope for at least a little sunlight to bring you through the day.
I hope that when the winter is over I will be able to appreciate the spring. Appreciate it by taking it for granted, I mean, because I want to.
One day last week, I had a really shitty day. Shitty in the way that a million things every hour on the hour from the moment I woke up till just before bed just kept on happening. I almost want another shitty day like that, though. It's hard to explain, but at the end of it, all I could do was laugh. I was so glad to have been distracted by mundane, petty things. That shitty day was the closest to normal I have felt in the last few weeks, ever since the shithole I've created grew tremendously, so much so that I still can't write about it properly, and won't be able to provide an explanation for some unpredictable faraway time.
Where do I go from here? Where do you go where everything in your life is different than it was before? Where the goals you've pursued for years are shattered, and your thoughts consume you, and confuse you with their many contradictions.
And in moments your guilt, self-pity and regret seem larger than you. Where you're brain only creates self-hateful thoughts. Where your conversation holds no hope or intellect.
When you are so far into the present that the past doesn't matter and the future seems unthinkable. Unimaginable.
In all other winters, which in retrospect seems degrees warmer than what I would have thought to be intolerable, I always had something, whether it were myself, a plan, a sense of humor, or hope.
But the emotional blizzard is so strong that no shelter lasts for long. Friends, books, movies, even sleep, all wear thin, breaking in the wind and blowing away.
I fight to get them back, just as I fight to be strong. The work is exhausting.
I sleep deeply, or I don't sleep at all, and never know which until the early morning when I start all over again.
Another cold front's coming, and it's going to get colder before it's over. Ray Bradbury talked about winter as a repeated theme in Something Wicked This Way Comes. I remember reading that book last year; it intrigued and terrified me.
Winter in Houston is like winter anywhere. You can feel it starting, but you don't know how cold it's going to get or when exactly it's going to end.
It can warm up for a couple of days. You might even feel a bit of relief when the cold breeze lets up, and you can step outside to shiver a little bit less. Only for the wind to come down again, or worse, rain. I haven't had one of those cold winter rains yet, but it's coming.
As for me, it's winter again. Not just outside, but inside. That season in your life where it's cold and dark, and you pray the Groundhog won't see it's shadow and hope for at least a little sunlight to bring you through the day.
I hope that when the winter is over I will be able to appreciate the spring. Appreciate it by taking it for granted, I mean, because I want to.
One day last week, I had a really shitty day. Shitty in the way that a million things every hour on the hour from the moment I woke up till just before bed just kept on happening. I almost want another shitty day like that, though. It's hard to explain, but at the end of it, all I could do was laugh. I was so glad to have been distracted by mundane, petty things. That shitty day was the closest to normal I have felt in the last few weeks, ever since the shithole I've created grew tremendously, so much so that I still can't write about it properly, and won't be able to provide an explanation for some unpredictable faraway time.
Where do I go from here? Where do you go where everything in your life is different than it was before? Where the goals you've pursued for years are shattered, and your thoughts consume you, and confuse you with their many contradictions.
And in moments your guilt, self-pity and regret seem larger than you. Where you're brain only creates self-hateful thoughts. Where your conversation holds no hope or intellect.
When you are so far into the present that the past doesn't matter and the future seems unthinkable. Unimaginable.
In all other winters, which in retrospect seems degrees warmer than what I would have thought to be intolerable, I always had something, whether it were myself, a plan, a sense of humor, or hope.
But the emotional blizzard is so strong that no shelter lasts for long. Friends, books, movies, even sleep, all wear thin, breaking in the wind and blowing away.
I fight to get them back, just as I fight to be strong. The work is exhausting.
I sleep deeply, or I don't sleep at all, and never know which until the early morning when I start all over again.
Labels: Books, Depression, Goals, Insomnia, Regret
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