Where did you come from?
And how do I cram you back into a box and seal the lid shut? How on earth did you–the demon I so vowed to slay–slither back into my world and launch yourself into so many fibers of my being?
Worse than physical illness!
Depraved,
Insidious,
Unneeded,
Unhelpful.
Go away!!
I banish you to another planet–another epoch–back into a cave somewhere in Dr. Seuss land. Back into a lead-lined bin that I can drop into the deepest reaches of the ocean or heave into a crevice in the Himalayas.
Snow – so what,
Failing knees – who cares,
Eyesight going – not very fast, thankfully,
Hearing – just a bit lopsided,
Gullet – rebuilt, like an engine, so functional enough,
A tad isolated – are you kidding? The world and friendships buzz at my fingertips.
You’re very hard to catch. You choose not to take any form, any shape, to have any specific target. You are not red-eyed or fanged or slimy green; not some child’s nightmare. You thrive, instead, as a phantom of faceless, shapeless feelings, on being amorphous, on coming down the corridor as raw anxiety, a kind of smoke that drifts in the window at night whose source I cannot find even with a night-gowned trip outside to check.
My weapon at the moment, gratitude.
Maybe a magic mirror that lets you glimpse your spectral self and understand how cruel you are—how eternally wicked your diet of hope and optimism.
A glimpse that shames you.
Maybe Dumbo’s feather that I can wave aloft when needed.
And maybe these words. ©
****
I wrote most of this in February 2017, hovering in between an eighteen day stint in the hospital over Christmas and April surgery. I’ve edited and added to those words now.
I grew up with a dad whose life was fueled by anxiety: work, money, what people thought, what his God wanted. And I promised myself as a teenager than I would NOT live that way, not in his torment. And mostly I’ve been lucky and haven’t. At least not in his all-consuming style. But during that winter of 2017, circumstances and medication pitched me into the swamp of misery that must have resembled the milieu that haunted my dad. I’ve emerged—considerably humbled and aware. Likely with more to learn.
