The Serpentine Road

I was sitting here in my library paying my bills, sorting through the huge mass of paperwork that seems to accumulate here. Sarah likes it when I call the study the library which, in fact, is just another bedroom.

I despise paying bills. Not because I don't have the money to pay them. God has blessed me with enough funds to pay the people I owe and still have a few dollars left to eat on. I'm truly thankful for that blessing. But I hate money in general and I hate shuffling it around.

During my attempt to sort it all out and clear off the desk, I ran across photos of people I love and people who love me. That's a nice thing to find after you've been handling bills. Their faces smile up at me and I feel lighter. But homesick. I ran across photos from the luncheon the church gave after the funeral and I am surrounded by my brothers and sisters and children and aunt and uncle. But Jerry isn't there. They are beautiful photos of everything in my life that is important save one. So, sadness follows.

Sadness is a constant companion but one who doesn't nag me to cheer up, get over it, etc. I can function with sadness. The Ativan has helped with the impending doom feeling that had begun to follow me after every simple life event, every shock, every frustration. I haven't taken St. John's Wort in nearly two weeks and don't feel the need. So, not depression... anxiety = constant stress of simply living.

Throughout the last two years I've been learning how to tread water. It gets very tiring at times but one keeps doing it because to stop means to drown. Life under normal conditions is trying. I do not live under normal conditions.

I think that most of the time life feels like a serpentine road that is filled with more twist and turns than you could ever imagine when you start the journey. At twelve I dreamed of a home and family and children and for a little while I had what I dreamed of and I think we were happy. I did not dream of this day. I started the journey along that road with a chimera.

The dream became a nightmare. I tried to wake him from a nightmare that night. Instead of waking him, I was pulled into it. I've never shared a nightmare before. I never want to again.

The road ended at a cliff and I fell off into a vast ocean and had to learn to swim. I hope that the beach I find myself on is not a desert island and that there is a bridge to the mainland that will connect me with something other than the nightmare.

I'm not dreaming anymore. I am not looking forward. I'm trying not to look back. I am simply looking at the moment I am in and hoping that around the next curve the road will not fall away and drop me into another ocean.