obliviate

If I throw myself hard enough into my job, nothing else will matter. So I've thrown myself into my job.

And I've been doing it fantastically well. So well, in fact, that I feel like I'm earning my extraordinary raise. So well that I'm managing, with creative ideas, to overhaul a few of the office systems. So well that the front office is becoming, well and truly, my domain. So well that my boss's son, himself going to law school and looking to join his dad in the practice in two years' time, gets panicky at the thought that I might have moved on by the time he becomes a partner.

So well that come day's end I'm too exhausted to process anything but my exhaustion. Which is, after all the goal. I'm becoming terribly efficient.

But there's a catch. It only works when I'm alone. I spent some time with friends last night, and things I thought weren't bothering me had me close to tears, and I realized, it's been a Bad Head Month. A long one.

There are reasons. It's not just the depression. That factors in, of course, but even "normal" (har) people have bad weeks and months. The "understood boundaries of my self" have undergone continuous strain the past four weeks. There's my own health. There are the usual What To Do with My Life and When Do I Do It crises. There's the I'm Always Alone Factor. But those are constants. The headaches wear me down, true. But still -- business as usual.

The burdens that made the harness straps creak were mostly the cat, and money. I'm an Introvert. I receive my replenishment from solitude (yes, I was just mourning my aloneness. But I mean, I need companionship. You can have solitude and still have companionship), and to have solitude, I need a sanctuary, a safe place, a refuge, a hiding place, a hobbit hole, a cave, a hermitage. That's my home. And Simon's sickness shattered the peace, serenity, and safety of my home. Instead of a place where I could retreat from stress and relax, home became my primary source of stress. And after awhile I couldn't deal.

Not to mention that the cat's bills maxed out my credit card and the last of my health savings account. I'm on my own, kids. Without that raise, I wouldn't be able to do it. Which makes me feel both enormously grateful and absolutely terrified. My parents help where they can, but when it comes down to it, I'm my own support system, and I can't count on another human being to bail me out. It's just me.

So all of that makes the Aloneness worse. I don't have anyone around to give me a hug, or to say, Sarah, calm down, you're making this way bigger of a deal than it is, or, simply, cool it, it's going to be fine and you know it, or, I'm here. Because I know I freak out over nothing when I'm tired and stressed, and that when I have a Bad Head phase I keep bad hours and don't sleep enough and don't eat enough (six or seven or maybe more pounds have mysteriously vanished from my person) and imagine the worst possible catastrophes in order to "prepare myself" (except what a ridiculous thing to do, you can't prepare yourself for that kind of stuff anyway) and stop cleaning the house and lose all my energy and stop cooking and that the only things I have the energy for are working, reading, listening to Sufjan and watching movies or TV on DVD and don't feel like talking to anyone or writing or blogging and wish I could have a week off so that I could do nothing but lie curled on my bed and sleep and do nothing and just heal.

Yeah, it's bad, friends. I know it's bad because of everything in the above paragraph, and because at the bottom of it all I don't feel all that sad, I just don't feel much of anything, and that's when it's bad bad. But I get up and I do my job and I distract myself and I'll pull through it. Because God's love is still there, it's the one thing besides the nothing that's coming through still clear. And the weather is bound to improve someday, that will help.

When the night falls
I carry myself to the fortress
Of your glorious cost
Oh how I may seek your fortress
When the night falls,
We see the star of wonder
Wonderful night falls,
We see you, we see you there

I see the stars coming down there,
Coming down there to the yard
I see the stars coming down there
Coming down there to my heart

[Those days, days, days run away
like horses over the hills...]