Before I begin, I want to say my most sincere thank you to everyone who not only reads, but comments on these words of mine. I don't mean only here, but to those of you who have sent e-mails or phone calls or any other form of support. My time and internet capabilities have been extraordinarily limited lately, and I haven't yet responded to most of you who've sent advice, encouragement, or just let me know you were listening. But it's important to me that all of you know just how much I appreciate everything you've done or said. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Now for the latest.
Depression, I have learned, comes and goes like the tide. Sometimes it's overwhelming, drowning everything in sight. My feet can find no purchase and my arms flail uselessly as the water savagely disorients me, wave after wave knocking me in different directions. When the tide loosens and my feet hit the sand again, I can move once more. Stained and stinking, weakened in flesh and spirit, my bearings come again. I find myself moving on, trying to get further down the shore, searching for some shelter against the next onslaught.
Enough metaphor.
I'm trying to fit into my latest apartment, and I find myself revisiting the notion I first realized when I moved into the last place I lived. I don't have a home anymore. I just have a place where I'll sleep and keep my clothes for the next few months. I used to move once a year, and even that was frustrating. Now, I've called five places "home" in the last two years. The only space I feel I can truly call mine is my truck, which over the last eight years has seen more of me than any two of my homes in that same time period.
I went out of town this week to visit a close friend. It was most helpful, both for the company and the distraction. She let me bear my emotions about the last few weeks, heard every word I had to say, as others have done. Traditionally, I speak to no one when I'm depressed, but this time--this time, I'm truly learning the value of other people's opinions. It's one way I'm learning from the mistakes of my past, this past year most especially.
I'm also waiting for someone to just slap me and tell me to get over it. The situation has changed, and hurt though it may, I can't go back. I can't fix it and make it the way it was. She has moved on with her life, and my role in it will never again be what it ever was or ever could have been. No matter what I have learned, no matter how I have changed, no matter how different and better I could make things if I only had the opportunity, I have to remember--every moment of every day, lest I forget--that the opportunity I want is gone, away, vanished. I already had my shot, and I blew it. Move on.
As easy as speaking so many words, isn't it?
But I cannot abandon my heart, not just yet. There's a point I need to prove, which is that for all my faults and mistakes, I am adaptable, capable of change. I need to make the case that even though it didn't work, it could have worked. I cannot live with her believing that it never would have been possible, that we were simply incompatible, and that's all. I need her to believe not only that I care, but that I see where I went wrong, and that I know how to fix it, were it not too late.
Is this merely a fool's errand? Perhaps. But in order to move forward, I have to prove that I've learned from my past. Maybe this will make no difference to anyone but me, but I won't feel like such an utter failure if I can get this done. Only then, so my heart tells me, will I stop acting like a child who wants his favorite's heart's desire, screaming and raging against the uncaring wind and stars, my cries vanishing into an eternal void, unheard and unmourned.
And perhaps--just perhaps--I'll get something I really want out of this.
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