violetcheetah | Entries tagged with depression

When there's no one else to do it, and I "do the buildings" at work, it means I leave the post office at 3:45 p.m., grab the few pieces of mail in a small drop and put them in a nearby blue bin, then walk a block and a half to the JFK federal building; I collect and sort mail there for 10-15 minutes, then head to the O'Neill federal building at about 4:10, get to the mailroom at 4:25 or so, and collect and sort mail there for half an hour, then bring that mail down the hall to the dock; the truck that picks up that mail then drives me back to the JFK building, where I collect and sort anything that's come in since I left, bring everything to the dock for the driver, and go back to the post office to finish out my day.

Yesterday, as I left the JFK building, it was starting to rain. I knew there was a storm headed this way, but now how strong, how long, or how likely it was to hit squarely. It was clearly going to rain harder than the light rain that was coming down at the time. But I had a schedule to keep, and there's no slack in the schedule. So I headed out. It started coming down hard within a minute.

By the time I got to the underpass under the big parking garage, where people were taking shelter, the wind was strong enough they were getting wet even under there. And I was already as wet as I could get, really; the rain sluicing off my raincoat plus the rain in general had pretty much soaked my shoes — light hiking boots, really — and the lower half of my shorts. I kept walking.

When I crossed Merrimac Street, there was three inches of running water at the curb. But my shoes were already soaked. There was two inches of water running down even the middle of the street. Four or five inches at the curb on the other side. Two inches standing water on the sidewalk. And then the hail started.

Small at first, then half an inch, then an inch, then larger. I got pelted by a few pieces, but it didn't hurt as much as I expected, more like a marble being flicked at you than a golf ball. The way large hail forms, if I understand right, is that smaller hail forms in the cloud, starts to fall, gets pulled back in an updraft to the top of the cloud, and falls again with more ice forming on it, and with the smaller pieces sometimes clumping together. Some of the larger pieces that came to rest on the sidewalk looked like stylized daisies, with a center piece and then smaller petals all around that center.

You couldn't see a block down the street because the rain was so thick, with the wind whipping the water white and blowing it horizontally. No one was out: no cars, no pedestrians. I was out. I was not normal, not waiting it out, insane, sloshing down the street. And I was where I was supposed to be. I was on my way to where I needed to be, and I was going to get there. And for the first time in months, I was at peace. I was walking, but I was at rest; my mind was at rest. I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to do, not because I had to but because it was what I wanted to do.

I tried to understand it, that prickle at the corner of my mind, why it felt so calmly good. Not just the aloneness, not just the quiet that you only find in the midst of a rushing storm or the ocean or a waterfall. The best I can explain is: if I was supposed to be there, then… then there existed a place where I was supposed to be. A place I belonged.

The place is gone. It only lasted 10 minutes, a soap bubble containing a small sphere of a different universe, and when it touched me, instead of popping, it wrapped around me, let me pass through its skin and walk in that world for a few minutes, and then wafted on its silently loud way out to sea. But for 10 minutes, there was a place where I belonged, and I was in it. I don't know how to believe it will happen again; I don't have the ability to have that faith. But at the same time, as I fail to believe, I also fail to believe that it's impossible. That's the closest I've come to hope — to active hope — in a long time.

Current Mood: pensive
Crossposts: http://violetcheetah.livejournal.com/80115.html

When I got out of the car at the cat shelter where my friend and I volunteer, there was a dragonfly on the ground. My favorite insect. One of her wings was… it was beyond bent, folded in half near the middle of the wing. She was on her back, moving slightly. I put my hand down and she held onto my finger, so I lifted her to look, and to see how bad it was. It was bad. The wing was creased like a folded paper you run your fingernail along to keep it flat. When I tried to see if it could unbend, or why it wouldn't, I could feel that the two halves were actually stuck together where they touched. You can't fix that, can you; it's not something that can heal, is it? She was dying. She was already dead. I knew it was kinder to crush her quickly, and I selfishly refused to give her peace.

It's hard to handle one wing of a dragonfly, to get that wing alone, without the others, refraining from holding the slender, soft abdomen between your huge thumb and finger. I was in terror that in her terror and struggle she would rip herself away from the wing I held her by; I knew it didn't matter, she was dead anyway, but it would be worse somehow to have a part of you ripped away, it must hurt more than just a broken wing. I finally had the grip I needed, with one thumb and finger on the outer part of the creased wing, one thumb and finger on the part near the body. I peeled the two sides apart, like tape from a piece of paper, and you know chances are the paper will rip, a thin film will come away with the tape and it'll be ruined, but there's no choice, and I expected the outer half of the wing to just fall off, to turn out to not even be attached at the crease. But it didn't. It stuck out at an angle for a few seconds, and then she pulled all four wings flat against each other, like sheets of paper tapped against a table, absolutely perfect, and I could no longer see the damage. But it had to still be there. It wasn't something you can fix, not something that can heal, it's prideful to even imagine, that you can fix something like that, prideful and childishly naïve. I had given her my finger again for her feet to hold, and she looked so perfect, it was painful to look at, knowing. Maybe, though, maybe it hurt less, the wing. Maybe she had peace. I took her to the pine tree against the fence and coaxed her feet onto a low twig. It seemed like the least-bad place to end life. And just in case, if this was something you recover from, at least she was out of harm's way while she gathered strength; no ants to attack on the ground, no birds likely to find her among the needles. I did not hope, but I wished, I wished I hoped, and I pretended like I hoped and put her there.

When I came back out ten minutes later, she was gone. Not on the branch, not on the bare ground below. I don't know if she recovered and flew away. I don't know how to even hope, because I don't know how to imagine that's possible. Creased, stuck together; I'm not an entomologist to know what's possible, and I don't want to call a professor at a university and ask because then I would know, and I can't imagine I would like what I know.

When my shrink read this, he replied, "I know that some stories don't have hopeful endings, and I'm not sure how you would feel about this, but I found myself thinking that the dragonfly was able to fly freely at least once more than it otherwise would." Maybe. Maybe she at least believed she could, in whatever way an insect believes. Maybe on the ground on her back she had known with certainty she would die, and then after the terror of being held by a monster, she had a moment among the pine needles when she knew with certainty — truth and logic don't matter — that she would fly away, when she believed she was not dying. They have such short lives that for her, a moment is a year, or perhaps a decade. Maybe I gifted her with the hope I couldn't feel myself. Maybe that's my life: telling stories that give others hope I will never feel. I don't know, but it's all I can manage now.

Current Mood: blank
Crossposts: http://violetcheetah.livejournal.com/79784.html

[I had actually had this idea come into my head a few days before Butler died, so that wasn't the cause, but it certainly added impetus to actually writing it. I wrote it last night at Write Here Write Now, and I figured it would resonate, but yeah, rather a lot, I gather.

----

Mary's Monologue

I know you fight back tears every time you hear the happy Christmas carols: Hark the Herald Angels Sing; Joy to the World; O Come Emmanuel. And I know you are stabbed with shame as your eyes sting, because it's Christmas, for God's sake. Everyone's supposed to be happy, with lights and presents and candies and eggnog, and eager children with shining eyes, and everyone is a kid this time of year, aren't they, flitting from gifts they want to gifts they want to give, and rush and bustle, and you: are just tired. You're so tired, and you can't tell anyone because you don't want to bring them down, not this time of year of all times. So you let them read what they want to read into the glisten in your own eyes. Well, hide the tears if you want to, but please, please don't feel ashamed. You are no more tired than I was, and I cried every day.

The trip took forever. Even with our one blanket as padding, the donkey's spine pressed against my own tailbone, each hoofstep ricocheting the two bones off one another until I had to ask Joseph to stop and let me walk, but of course walking was agony after ten minutes, with my pelvis splayed in anticipation of delivery, and back I'd go on the donkey. I stopped trying to hold in my urine after the first day, because it didn't do any good; it wasn't like anyone was around to smell me, anyway, except Joseph, and we were both rank with sweat, anyway.

And then we arrived, to a town I didn't recognize, overflowing with people, surly and tired and often drunk. I cried constantly, in front of every innkeeper in town, some more than once, and of course you know, reading this now, that it didn't do any good. If I hadn't already been in labor, I don't know if we would have been offered even the stable. I wept harder when we closed the door behind us, but it was almost joy: so quiet after the rush and bustle of the streets, the scent of the ruminants' dung sharper and cleaner that the human waste that was everywhere outside.

The night of labor I don't even remember clearly, except that each of my screams was always echoed by one animal or another, an urgent bleat or bray or cow moan, and even in the agony that every grown woman I knew had warned me about and none had truly prepared me for, some part of my mind saw how funny it was, and in those moments, I felt God watching, saw him in Joseph's eyes, loving and rueful and sorry, and for just an instant I felt unalone.

And then there he was, my son, not Godly or holy, but squalling and blood-smeared and just like any other baby, and I wept, but not for joy. I grieved. I knew as he nursed that I would live to see him die, that his father conceived him within me for that, because somehow this all-powerful creator of the earth and the waters and the plants and animals hadn't seen fit to make a world that didn't require blood to atone for its wrongs. And not just a ram or a dove anymore, but a human lamb, not one to be simply shorn for its wool but to be butchered. God had stayed Abraham's hand as he prepared to sacrifice Isaac. There was no one to stay the hand of God.

For unto us a child is born? No! Unto me! My baby, from my body, now suckling my breast. To be taken from me now, given to the world that doesn't deserve him, so that the world can deserve him? Maybe I don't deserve him either, because if it had been my choice, I would have fled, not just from Herod but from God, from man, from Joseph if I had to. There were caves, everyone knew about the people who lived there, odd people, but they would have welcomed us, and my son would have been the one to lay me to rest, as it should be. As God intended.

So cry now if you feel like it. Hide in your bed all month. Sleep through the grey days. The world has enough shepherds and wise men out there to make merry and rejoice at the gifts they've been given and give gifts that no one really wants. You are welcome to stay here with me, nestled against the donkey's freshly rinsed belly, working up the strength for the long journey ahead.