Monday, December 29, 2008

Out of the dark

It's a bad day for me today. I know it's a bad time of year, and a bad time of month, but it's still really bad. I turn 31 a week from today, and I fear this is turning into one of those depressed blogs. There are all kinds of blogs--bread blogs, and knitting blogs, and weight-loss blogs, and entertainment blogs, and etsy blogs. It's ridiculous. I only feel really justified posting when I'm actually doing something.

But there are depressed blogs, too. So maybe that's what this one is now.

My light has gone out. I've been living like a zombie the last however many months. I've been trying to fight the despair with feeble flickers of hope, but I've started to feel like someone keeping a fire lit in the middle of a hurricane. No matter how hard I try, horrible incapacitating sadness reaches up from my belly and grabs my by the throat. I know what Janis Joplin says: "Try. Just a little bit harder." I know what Jesus says: "Be perfect as my Father is perfect." And then in the biggest, fattest lie of the entire Bible: "Your yoke is easy and your burden is light."

I have no choices. I'm being neatly dovetailed into that cultural hellhole that is a nine-to-five job, debt, meaninglessness. Everyone who claims to love me seems to think it'd be good for me. "It'll give you something to do, Melissa. It'll get you out of the house. You'll meet people." They just don't know that all I want is to not feel hurt anymore. To not hate myself exactly as much as I do.

It's ironic, isn't it? Blurting out my deepest secrets to the entire internet, things I won't even tell my closest friends or family, things I won't even tell myself.

I can do it, I know. Get another job like those I've had in the past, lock myself away from the sun during the day, get the certainty of instant cash from the ATM, a little square carpeted cage to house myself in, a little metal cage to take me in between the two. I can find an addiction (maybe even a culturally approved of one!) to dull the pain.

We're all vampires, every single last one of us. I'm just trying to fight it, and failing. I'm not strong enough. I never have been. I'm sorry.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now it does sound like a blog on depression. I feel bad that you are in the depth of despair! I have been depressed and felt socially isolated for the past 3 years, so I read other people's blogs to get a ray of sunshine in my life. I was layed off from my last job in September and have not had much luck finding another one. I just keep telling myself it has to get better. Do I believe that, well some days I do, and others, I just hate everything and everyone! So somehow I think I know how you feel, in a weird sort of way. So I just have to remember, we don't always get what we want, we just have to be thankful for what we have. So today I am thankful for what I have, a place to live a vehicle to drive and my health.

Anonymous said...

Melissa, Read the Desiderata, pay attention to the second last stanza. By the way how is the boat? I tried to help when you had engine problems.

Anonymous said...

u sound like u need a few weeks with Secret

Phil and Jessica Smith said...

Um - check out the yoke is easy passage. You're right - it would be devastating (and a lie) if Jesus had said, "Your yoke is easy..." but He said, "My yoke is easy and MY burden is light." Big difference - eternal difference for both now and and the future. And what about vs. 28? If a misreading of vs. 30 is the biggest lie, a correct reading of vs. 28 is the biggest statement of hope in the Bible. I agree with your blog post - you have seemed to be running everywhere in the past few years and it must be an exhausting way to live. Praying for you in this this dark time, that you will look back to the light of the world. Luke 1.77-79

Anonymous said...

So what do you want from those of use who still check your blog for updates. Confirmation that the world sucks! Yep it does at times.