One of Those Nights

 I haven’t written because I feel made of ugliness, resentment, and criticisms. I don’t want to codify these thoughts and I don’t have the energy to pretend I feel anything else. 

I’m exhausted. 

My soul itself is surviving on sighs of complacency and hope for joy on the horizon. 

I’m not happy. 

I feel shaken. 

My foundation cracked.

I’m sad. 

I’m filling my time with projects and people to keep the dark thoughts at bay. WhenI’m alone, too tired to do one more thing, my breaths feel quick and my heart beats faster while I think of all the ways I am simply not enough. 

There is not enough of me. 

There are too many needs. Too many requests. And I am not enough. 

These seasons always pass.

I know they do.

This is worse than the past because I have had tangible reasons to struggle. I’ve had to accept apologies and forgive. I’ve had to put my ugliness aside and speak with love. I’ve held my biting words aside as much as my fragile self control would allow- speaking truth instead. For the sake of the future, I had to work toward reconciliation. 

But now daylight savings has the sun setting at 6pm. Clinical depression is holding hands with seasonal depression and they’re both fueled by genuine heartbreak. It’s a cocktail of tragedy.

I don’t know what “moving forward” looks like. 

I feel stuck, struggling to find comfort at midnight, wrapped snug in heavy winter blankets. I am exhausted in my bones. But sleep will not come. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts tonight. 

And I know I can go to a doctor and they’ll prescribe yet another pill to make sleep come faster.

I don’t want a pill.

I want peace.

Pills don’t make peace. They make internal chaos bearable. I can bear this. I just hate it, and I’m aware of it, and I hate it. I’ve had so many pills. So many doctors. So many attempts. And no one has given me the secret to keep nights like this one from tempting me to make it my last. 

It’s a struggle I’ve had for years. It’s gotten worse with the extra trauma. But medication or not, nights like tonight feel fueled only by my willpower- by my dedication to seeing tomorrow. And no one has ever told me how to keep nights from feeling like this. Sure, there are techniques, gratitude lists, ways to cope when anxiety has a larger role, but the hope is that I simply wouldn’t have nights like this.

But I do.

No matter the meds. No matter the therapy. The coping mechanisms be damned- tonight is heavy and I am weak and no one told me how to keep that from happening. 

Just how to keep going when it’s here. 

It feels like another presence, pressing into mine, until there isn’t room for both of us and I have to actively choose to keep making room for myself. 

I don’t know if that makes sense. It does to me.