I'm not sure that I have it in me to write a long blog right now - it took me two hours just to write that first line. It's been a shit-show of a day, the kind where you just kind of feel like you're losing your tether on everything. I sometimes feel like I'm drowning in my desire to give up, and it's only some weird mix of fear and stubbornness that keeps me going.
I've been listening to music, not to feel better but to remember. There are days where I just have to do that, even when it's painful. Songs that remind me of him, songs that remind me of my aunt. Sometimes it's good to think back, to reflect on everything. 2017 was an absolute nightmare of a year, filled with sick children, therapy, anxiety, a flooded basement, a broken marriage, broken trust, a heart broken several times, fruitless job searches, an autism diagnosis, and my aunt dying of cancer way too young. If I blank out anything else in my life, I hope it's that year. Until that happens, I'll remember it. Because it's my life.
And life is strange. You never know where you're really headed, where you'll end up, who will stick around. You find people you want to keep and lose them. You work your ass off for a job, only to have it make you sick. You do things for your family, but have less time to actually spend with them. You have to pry your two year old off your leg just to go work. You listen to him scream as you walk away. Your five year old asks you when you're going to play with her again, and tries to make you stay in her bed at night because it's the only time she gets one-on-one with you. You lose what you wanted and get nothing back in return. And you just pray, without faith, that somehow it will look up because you lack the heart to hope for it anymore. It's become something outside yourself. You wait for it without actual expectation. You don't want this to be the next 60 years of your life but the control is out of your hands. You feel trapped.
You start to wonder if things ever will get better. It's hard to stop the dark, dizzying spiral once you enter that kind of headspace. The more you try to pull yourself out, the farther you get sucked in. Your mind works against you, telling you the opposite of everything you try to tell yourself. You're basically crazy - arguing with your own mind while your mind argues with you. Which one is really you? They always say that you have to ignore that inner voice, but that inner voice is you. There's no demon in there, whispering dark thoughts. It's you. And ignoring yourself is a very hard thing to do. And something I'm very bad at.
Fuck it. I don't even know where I'm going with this post anymore. I think I just needed to get everything out, to stop trying to pretend I'm okay when I feel so hopeless about everything. "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" is playing on repeat in my mind, a constant reminder of something that was never really mine to begin with. Someone once asked me, after I sang them that song, whether I would follow them into the dark. I said yes, and I guess I did. It's just too bad that I'm now stuck in it alone.