Cold hard reality...

It's funny, but I've managed to almost convince myself that I'm really doing just fine.

You know, I get up, I go to school, I don't scream and I usually make it to work on time. So, for all intents and purposes, I'm doing fine.

See, if you look in the window, it all looks good. The lights are nice and bright, and rugs are straight on the floor, the chairs are all upright and tidy. The books are on the shelves and the pictures hang on wall, neat as a pin.

It's a lie. I know it doesn't look like it, but it's all a lie. That neat tidy room...it's a painted screen. It's all flat and one-dimensional, like the backdrop for a play, but it's all I've got to hang on to. If you step behind that screen, it's a bit of a different story most days.

Oh, don't get me wrong, there are days when it's just peachy in here. There are days when I don't curl up in a ball and sit in the corner wondering why in God's name I'm still here when so many others aren't.

There are days when it doesn't look like some sort of whirling dervish went through here at 900 mph, flinging things this way and that, yanking the pictures down.

There are days when I don't feel like clawing at the walls until my fingers bleed, days when I don't feel like throwing things because it's the only way I can think of to actually get some of the poison out of me.

Those are the days I sew. Those are the days when I pull out the PTSD quilt and I look at it in pieces and try very carefully to sew it all up again. To make the lines straight and the points pretty, to control something in my life, to manage to put something back together from this whole experience.

Some days I just try to keep breathing, telling myself that "This, too, shall pass." It will, I know that, but it can be really hard to explain depression to those who don't actually share a life with it. I saw a commercial today, and it had people wandering around with scales chained to them. Think of it that way, only you're chained to a huge gaping Pit that will suck you in and down and down and down and down until you can't see the top and daylight is only a memory. The air at the bottom of the pit is thick and heavy, so heavy that you feel like you're walking around with a huge heavy blanket over you all the time.

Sometimes, finding a ladder is easier than others. Sometimes that ladder even reaches the top of the Pit. Sometimes, though, climbing the ladder makes you so damned tired you just want the rung to break under you and *whup whup whup whup* you're back where you started.

I hate writing this all down, putting it in black and white (or grey and dark grey as the case may be) because John's already worried about me. He's worried about how I'm holding up and whether or not I'll still be in the same county as my rocker when he gets back. (I'm already off it. Right now, though, I think it's still in sight, but it could be a mirage...)

No, I'm not going to do anything stupid.

I'm fine right now. Part of this is hormonal, part of this was just me being honest on my post-deployment health assessment.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go sew and get ready for work.