I hear a song and it sparks a memory and I'm in tears. A movie scene, a phrase, a dream even a scent can summon the sadness that envelopes me and threatens to send me over the edge in to a full fledged melt down that can last for minutes, hours or in some cased days. It's like that nagging little headache some people suffer with. Always there, annoying and always threatening to grow more painful.
Yesterday I fought that sadness as best I could. I told myself "I will not cry today." I won the battle for most of the day. At dinner, which I shared with my wonderful grandson Zachary, out of the blue I looked up at Matthew's portrait and suddenly missed him so much I could not swallow my food. I felt the tears well up in my eyes and the sadness covered me from head to toe almost instantly. Zachary noticed right away and asked me if I was okay. I told him I was, but I wasn't. I was so sad I could hardly breath. I had to tear my eyes away from the portrait and force my thoughts to my dinner, which had lost all taste and appeal.
When I went to bed and tried to concentrate on some sappy Christmas movie the sense of sadness stole my focus and I ached from loneliness. Thoughts of lost love stabbed at my heart. Wondering if I will always feel like this the tears threatened to flow. "I will not cry today" I screamed in my brain!
Finally welcomed sleep came. Suddenly I was searching for someone, a dense fog surrounded me as I blindly reached out calling several names, my heart pounded and legs shook as I stood in the darkness and the sadness took me to places I did not want to go. In agony I reached out for the faces that swirled around me. Not quite touching them, not quite able to see clearly who they were. I awoke with the hot tears running down my cheeks, gasping I tried to catch my breath and regain some sense of where I was. The voids in my life, the empty places in my heart have been over taken by sadness. Where joy once resided is now over grown with empty sadness and I have to fix it.
I am desperate to have some control over these waves of sadness. As a new day dawns and I sit here in the darkness I find myself dreading the day, dreading having to be ever on top of this sadness. Again today I have the goal to not cry. Get through the day, get through the holidays....surely there is more than this....
For the moment I am where I am in my life. I don't know how long these struggles will last. I don't know what tomorrow may bring. I do know that I want more. I do know that I deserve more and I hope with all I have to be in a better place soon. Baby steps? Perhaps. I have heard it said that through struggles we are learning...I should be pretty damn smart by now. I will face today a minute at a time. I will fight each battle as it comes. For each battle that I win today brings the end of the war closer.
