Escape Velocity

Another restless night. Michael didn't sleep well; did back bothers him all the time since he's regained so much weight. Plus the two new kittens, who are living in the bedroom… unbelievably adorable, but wanting to play at the wrong times. Of course. Fortunately they're still so tiny and totally cute that no one minds too much. But Michael got up early, and then I got up, and he wanted to go back to bed… and I feel lousy, so I tried, but my head was just spinning into a thousand unhappinesses and resentments, nowhere good. So I got up and made a cup of tea, and ate some cottage cheese and dried apricots, a combination that doesn't fit into any eating plan that I know of.

And thought and thought and thought. About escape velocity, about that analogy that always hits for me, of a marble being spun in a bowl, never quite getting up enough speed to make it out, always falling back to the center. It's what I feel like… I have a few good days, a few days when the past doesn't seem so real, or I can visit the happy parts, when I get things done here, and it all seems possible and manageable. When it seems likely that Michael will get truly well again, and we'll have a real life, and I'll lose weight, and it will all be… I don't know. Perfect and wonderful, and we will live happily ever after. And then there's a day like yesterday, a morning like this one, when it's all too much. When I see how little things change, and I hit that sure marker of depression for me, that counting of how many days I have left. I want to talk to someone about this. I want to talk to my mother, to say, how do you cope with this, what do you do? But even if it were possible, the words would stick in my throat, and I wouldn't ask for help. I never do. I never have.

In a way, the worst part of all of this is that I feel so stuck. I feel like I'm in this rut, and it's more about the psychology of it all than about the actual physical constraints. I am learning nothing from this; I am feeling nothing but pain. I don't know where to go with it. Other things… I can see how much better I'm getting at some kinds of things, about letting things go, not needing a resolution to every little quarrel, at just existing on my own, not so attached to everything. All the years of not-exactly-regular meditation practice, of breathing and metta prayers has done something for my ability to coast through the day to day without getting so hung up into it.

But instead, I get caught in the past and the future, two meaningless places to be. I run the movies of the past in my head, and sometimes they're entertainment, a connection to a different world, sometimes a way of understanding. But there are deep, dark traps, and there's nothing good once you hit them. They're all about resentment and anger and loss, and it's hard to remember a time when my life wasn't about those things, on some level. And the future… well, who knows? I don't think I have the energy to speculate.

I'm just tired. Really tired.