The Sound of Silence

I once stood in a sweaty crowd, mashed between some very fat men wearing wife beaters and a few old women with their hair dyed hot pink and neon purple.
I was at a Sex Pistols concert.  And not because I actually LIKED the Sex Pistols but because I wanted to go and have the experience.
I poured back into my college home somewhere around 3 am smelling like beer, and fell asleep content to have checked something off my list.

It was how I came out of my silence.

For years leading up to that experience, I'd been gradually pulling myself out of depression.  High School is just hard.  It is.
I've met ONE person out of at least a thousand that admitted to loving high school, and I felt very sad for them.
Because life -if it's anything -is only UP from there.  And anyone who longs for those years must lead a pretty sad present.

As I emerged from my silence, my darkness... I was life itself.  I lived, really I did.  I lived as much life as life would allow without trespassing too harshly on my own honor. 
I kissed boys I shouldn't have and ended up smashed between sweaty fat men at rock concerts, yes.  But I also wrote poetry, thrift shopped, and gave endlessly into my insatiable appetite for music.

I loved country -classic, modern -it didn't matter.  I loved folksy and artsy and independent and hated how much I loved Eminem (stupid talented stupid).
I went from Reba to Weezer to LFO to Simon and Garfunk.

I thought of them tonight... Simon and Garfunk.

Hello darkness, my old friend.

I find myself plunked back into the place I was before the sex pistols.  I'm in silence and darkness.  I've been fighting it, somehow feeling like this diagnosis was reserved only for the weak -for those who aren't brave or gritty enough to face life with a machete and a She-Ra bra.

Can a step one disclosure really do this to someone?  It isn't like he told me anything I didn't already know -really.  The muchness of it was a blow, I'll admit.  But so much of a blow that it's wounded me THIS DEEP?  Am I really this crazy?  

And then the awful thought came... like it always comes.  A broken record playing in my mind...

What is wrong with me?

And then I remembered that in July my life changed entirely. 
ENTIRELY.
I was gritty and tough.  I DID have some kind of mental machete out.  I forged a path to a job, a bank account.  I rolled my sleeves up and rolled in mud like I'd been born in it. 
But then Grandpa got sick and almost died.
And then my cousin hit a bus.
And then Dad was in ICU at Barrow's Neurological Institute.
Then Danny got a new job and was gone for 9 weeks.
Then Mom got her knee replaced.
Baby's first birthday, Danny's birthday, Christmas, New Year's, my daughter's birthday...

Before I knew it, I was sitting on the couch thinking how impossible bathing my children felt.  How feeding 5 people everyday made scaling a mountain seem like child's play.

What is wrong with me?

In our group therapy last week, we were asked to write down our response -as a loved one -to trauma.  I looked at their list of examples, and dismissed a few including hopelessness.

Oh, no -that's not me.  I'm stronger than hopelessness.  I'm braver than that.  I know better than to be hopeless.

But I looked in my soul mirror last night and finally decided to be honest with myself... I'm going through depression.

I take heart in knowing that I pull out of depression in a pretty loud way, so there's something amazing at the end of this darkness.
 

Hello darkness, my old friend.

I've come to talk with you again.

Because a vision softly creeping,

Left it's seeds while I was sleeping.

And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains

Within the sound of silence.

I can't put a time limit on this, but I can recognize it and stop wondering what's wrong with me.  I can lean into it without letting it beat me.  I can emerge from it Sex Pistols style.