Originally posted on February 5, 2011 at 4:15 PM
I’ve never claimed this to be anything but guts on the table, after all.
I’ve always been a big believer in/supporter of pathetic fallacy, probably because of my background in literature. Now whether I truly let the weather influence my moods or if there’s some sort of fate or chance or spirit involved in this… well, I suppose that’s up for grabs as much as any subjective belief is. But no matter how you slice it, the weather and I seem to have an empathy.
In spite of all my education and logic, there’s always an initial resistance to admitting I’m struggling with depression. As soon as I’m aware of that thought, I tell someone. There’s no reasonable shame in the fact that I’m going through or have just gone through one of the darkest points in my life.
It doesn’t matter what brought it on; actual events have little to no bearing on my emotional obstinacy, which, of course, infuriates a logic-driven mind such as mine. How I am at the same time one of the most overemotional and reasonable people I’ve ever met is beyond me, but there it is. A conundrum wrapped up in a fragile shell called skin.
Somehow, my despair brought on the snow. Didn’t you know this? The seven inches or so of snow we’ve gotten in Denton over the past week was all me. It would seem. Because as I dropped off into a black hole of depression, sleeping as much as I could to avoid being awake, it began to snow. After those first insensible 48 hours of sobbing every waking minute and not being able to eat or think clearly, there was a fluffy white blanket sealing the ground off from reality. It cocooned us at home for the next five days, wrapped us in a shell that kept us from the outside world.
As more and more snow fell, I began to be okay. I discovered that reading was a great way to keep from thinking, much as sleeping is, so I finished five novels in as many days. In its own strange sort of way, this became a wonderfully enjoyable time for me, like a bubble of fiction in the middle of real life. Somehow, I began to heal – no, not heal. I began to let myself feel. To acknowledge that I was wounded and that I might always be wounded and that wounds take time to heal. And that’s okay.
Yesterday was the last day we got snow. I returned to working on my novel, which had miraculously untangled itself in my absence, and felt both an aching hollowness and a sense of overflowing with something intangible. I always feel this, to some degree. I think I always have.
So now I sit in my office, a place I avoided steadfastly for six days, and look out my window.
The snow is melting.
Bit by bit, the white coating is dissolving into the ground to reveal the earth that’s underneath. That has been underneath, hidden, for a week now. But only now, I’m ready to see it.
When the snow melts completely away, don’t be too surprised if the ground beneath it is bleeding.
Share this:
