My Mistress

Although I felt I had escaped her grasp and believed I was headed further into the light, in the back of my mind, I feared my mistress would come to collect me once again.

The abuser. The one who cuts at my heart until it bleeds then watches as I crawl back into the cage she’s kept me in most of my life. The darkness does not protect me from the torment. It just hurts less.

Today, her outreached arms slowly wrapped around by body in that familiar dark and heavy way. My holiday was over. She was calling me home.

Lately I have felt completely different than usual. Detached -floating in the ether. Chores not completed. Projects left unfinished. For the first time in my life, I could feel what was coming, but was unable to decipher what “it” was leading me into.

“It” was depression. The mistress who has never allowed me to stray too far away from her side.

For over a week, the pressure has been building and I could not understand why. I wrote it off to the weather changes along with some alterations I had made with my meds.

My day started off with the attempt to escape an anxiety attack that was aggressively consuming my mind. I all but ran out the front door in an effort to get to my car and drive to my physical therapy appointment. My hopes were that the 10-15 minute travel time would grant me a reprieve from the anxiety onslaught.

While the mission was accomplished, the residual anxiety initiated a serious moment of disorientation that did not want to let up in intensity. It was a rare case where I had no choice but to sit down. I was eventually able to push through PT and return home.

I dove into a project I’ve been working on for well over a month. I figured I could focus on that and it would allow me to get right in my mind. Instead, my next lesson arrived shortly after I picked up my paint gun.

After hundreds of dollars in supplies and dozens of man hours, the project was a total failure. Examples of my lack of critical thinking was unavoidable. I failed to plan. I failed to prepare. I failed to execute properly.

Although this project was the gut-punch, it was only one of many mental assaults that were unleashed on me today… and it all culminated when my attorney called and had me walk through my entire list of disabilities and how they have impacted my daily life.

I am forced to accept a hard lesson in how nothing is as it once was. It’s something different and nothing I can easily understand. Today was also my reckoning with the event that created all of this. I have been in denial regarding the severity of what happened and how it impacted me – till now. I can no longer pretend. My mind had always been my greatest strength as well as my worst enemy.

Now, it’s just my enemy.

I struggled to write this entry. It was difficult in many ways to compose my thoughts in a cohesive manner. I’m not even sure how this reads. I’ve checked over it many times and continue to be unsure how it reads. It’s just time to hit the publish button and move on.