Periods of Darkness

In my life, I enter into these periods of darkness, when my alignment changes and everything seems less hopeful and a few shades darker than it might normally seem. During these times, rather than being something that has to be dealt with for a finite period of time, the struggles seem to be as immoveable and permanent as mountains.

The car I have now, the one that still rarely starts the first time after $1,500 of parts and labor, will be mine forever. The chaos at work will go on indefinitely and I will continue to be the face of everything that's wrong with the system I support. You get the picture. It's like a slump in baseball. The harder you try to break the slump, the deeper it seems to become.

This is my Achillies Heel. I can go from well adjusted to down in the dumps without ever really trying very hard or even realizing that it's happening. I don't know why, and the harder I seem to push back against it, the deeper the hole seems to get. You see, if I recognize that this is something wrong with me, that it's somehow something that makes me abnormal and it's a flaw, then it's proof that my original thesis--that this is all self-inflicted--is true. And, in its uniquely absurd way, it deepens the hole even more.

This is not a rational thought process. And I guess the fact that I see it for what it is, is progress. Mornings are worse than the rest of the day. I have a theory about that, but it's another topic for another time. So I know that if I wait long enough, the day will get better. I know that there will be people around me at work today, and many of those people seriously care about me. And I know that if I can make it until sometime between 4:30 and 5:30, I won't have to worry about it again until tomorrow.

I know these things. But sometimes I forget them.

Anyway, if someone who might want to hire me sees this, my name is Steve, I live in Mount Airy, NC, and my phone number is 336-867-5309. Ask for Jenny.