Tell me what it feels like he said.
I stood with clippers in hand, trying to think, but I couldn’t. We were working at Avocado’s because that was my job, and he joined me because, well, he was well between contracts.
He waited. The cool of the shade took the edge of his frustration a little. He waited some more. And I tried to find the words but couldn’t, so he turned and walked away. The conversation ended.
Weeks later, I woke one night. A kid squished on either side of me and a dog between my feet. I shifted my foot, and she, being the largest of toy poodles in personality, growled at the displeasure of being moved.
It was dark, typically as it is at night time, but extra dark as there was no moon this night, and I was hot.
“So much for winter coming,” I said.
He was at work, and I was here again, alone in the dark, but then even if he is home, I am alone in the dark.
I thought about our conversation in the Paddock and the despair that crossed his face as I told him I couldn’t remember the last time I was happy.
Don’t you remember the last time you were happy? He said it back like it was a question to himself. I could almost see him considering that this was his fault, but none of this is his fault, and none of this should be taken personally.
“Tell me what it feels like” I heard him say in my head again, as I propped myself up on my elbows, the bed sheet growing tight on my chest.
But how do you describe nothing? You don’t feel anything. No joy, no anger, no sadness- nothing. You feel like nothing. Like the dark. Like you have no personality and your body is heavy from having nothing inside it. Being nothing is a heaviness that makes your legs drag and your heartache.
It’s like a sweltering, uncomfortable dark summer night.
Then you roll over into the arms of your sleeping child, and anxiety swells that you haven’t given them enough of yourself. That you haven’t been the best mum you could have been and so anxiety, then guilt sits quietly and comfortably next to the nothingness like comfortable strangers at a movie.
Except it’s not like what it is in the movie’s scenes of crying in corners or rolled up in bed.
Not everyone suffers like that.
For some, it was just moving from one task to another because not everyone wants to die; it’s just that they believe if they did, they wouldn’t be missed. They are functional. But for them, life is foggy, things are a little harder, and it’s not to say you don’t appreciate life or the beauty of it. You understand you are loved; it’s just that you don’t think you give enough or that you are enough. You’re a burden. Annoying. It’s not selfish.. You’re too busy thinking about how much of a burden you are to everyone else. But regardless, you get on with it because not to wouldn’t be good enough.
Then, as you think some more in the dark about how and why you got here, anger slips in. For some, I think that is a good thing because anger is a feeling and having anger about something and someone is better than nothingness, anxiety and guilt.
That is, providing you deal with it properly, but common sense doesn’t go out the window when you have anxiety or depression. It’s just how you deal with that – that is up to you- it’s just that sometimes desperation moves in because no one wants to live with nothing forever. No one. And me, I’m yet to be desperate, I’m too busy fighting I have made my choice but then I haven’t had to fight that hard or for that long. I am not battle-weary.
I am also privileged to have my husband’s support and my family’s love. I owe my life to them and a few dogs, if I am being honest. And as parents especially mothers we are a strong breed, FIFO often makes us stronger than most and when you are through the other side seeing that is easy but when in the midst of it’s hard and shitty.
So you toss, and turn in the dark, sometimes accidentally on purpose, waking a child just to feel less alone in that moment. They will flop their heavy, sleep-filled body onto you with a murmured I love. You will stroke their hair; your heart will break, and sometimes that is enough to find your way back to sleep free of the dark. Or sometimes, it will swell your heart open enough to make it through another day in the hope today will be the day the fog is gone, the nothingness is replaced with just a little bit of joy, and the heavy becomes lighter.
Patient loved one, this is what it feels like to me.
Life line 131114.
