Fearless

My heart beat in slow motion - one Mississippi, two Mississippi – and I swear I saw the molecules of air in front of my little sister's face fly away in chaotic, swirling tornadoes when she screamed my name.

The car in front of us drove it's front left wheel up the guardrail, grinding along the metal boundary between interstate overpass and old county road below and, with the other three wheels still on the surface of the highway, the body of the car gauged a long, terrible arc into the asphalt before stopping.

I pulled onto the shoulder of I-10 only yards from the steep concrete retainer wall which stretched beneath the overpass and my younger sister, a nurse, burst from my little Jetta and scrambled through traffic to the unfolding tragedy where she knelt close to the person who lay motionless on the ground.

The echo off the concrete of the underpass doubled the roar of the cars and the rumble of semi engines yet I still heard my sister yell adamantly at the person beside her, “Stay with me damn you! Look at me! Don't you dare close your eyes!”

I called 911 while she did the miraculous thing that I could not and in those terrible moments she evolved in my mind from little sister to woman and hero.

This weeks prompts are the word "fearless" and this image.

For more information about Five Sentence Fiction check out Lillie McFerrin Writes.

Illusions in the Rain

Visual prompt for this weeks FSF Challenge.

The rain poured thick and loud, obscuring the buildings that lined the street and roaring over our voices no matter how loud we tried to talk or how hard we tried to listen.

Seizing the hand of my long-time friend, who rather like Big Bird's Mr. Snuffleupagus existed only in my imagination, I pulled him eagerly down the middle of the narrow street slowly filling with water.

I laughed, sang, and twirled in his arms to music that existed only in my mind as we approached the arched tunnel through a stone pedestrian bridge which stretched across the road we sloshed along.

When we stepped into cover of the small underpass I pointed to the curtain of water hanging over it's opposite end and announced, “Leaving through that side, in a magical moment, will take me to another point in my life," and then I snarled, "it might even be a time when my mind is not lost and you don't exist.”

I saw bewilderment on his face and a touch of fear in his eyes as I loosed my fingers from around his hand and shoved him back into the downpour we just left and then I rushed through the enchanted veil of rain which promised to free me from my madness.

Attempt at a Tanka

The challenge for today from NaPoWriMo is to write a type of poem called a tanka. It's a strange form (to me, at least) but what the heck. I couldn't come up with anything that would fit the theme of this blog, so this little five-line poem has nothing to do with mental illness.

My living room

by Jennifer Clark

(c) April 11, 2013

Couch and a lounge chair?

Mine are in such disrepair.

Rug, lamp, solitaire?

They're yours but they're calling me.

I'll take them if they are free.

For more information about National Poetry Writing Month go to the NaPoWriMo website.

Describe Depression

Warning: adult language.

"Depression hurts. Cymbalta can help."

I hate that commercial. For years I criticized the need to take medications to deal with depression. All those side effects. How in the world can someone think that taking a medication with all those side effects is a good idea? Who wants to live with diarrhea for the rest of their life? Who wants to develop a shake, a jitter, that never goes away?

I was convinced that depression could be handled by a good diet, good exercise, and a balanced life. I had none of the above. No wonder I was depressed. I didn't eat right at all. Coffee in the morning on an empty stomach. And not just one cup either. Several cups. I needed several cups of coffee each morning or I would get a headache. Several cups of coffee has its own side effect - shaking, the jitters. The irony of it. Take the medication to avoid depression and you get the jitters. Don't take the medication and live with a coffee breakfast and you still get the jitters. So fuck it.

I didn't usually get lunch either. The demands of my job were sufficient that I worked right through lunch most days. As the school year went on, I ate lunch less and less often. I ate foods that were less and less good for me, too. I resorted to quickie foods when I took… when I stole a moment to grab something to eat. Chips and a soda. I often skipped the soda, but not for water.

I avoided just about all liquids. If I drank anything during the day, then I needed to use the restroom during the day. The life of a teacher does not allow for such luxury. Passing periods are short and students are shuffled along and into their next classroom as quickly as possible. I couldn't leave my room unattended. That could be disastrous. My room had all kinds of equipment in it that the kids could have messed with. Graphing calculators go missing when they are not accounted for at every moment of the day. Even with eagle eyes on them the batteries still manage to be stolen. The projector is a favorite to fuck with. The kids can't steal it (at least not easily) but they can still mess with the buttons and disconnect the cords. The same with the Elmo. It's a great piece of equipment, but needs to be watched over. Going to the bathroom between classes was not an option. Going to the bathroom during the class was not an option either.

My diet was terrible. Dinner was usually decent. My husband cooked well and often. I worked so much and for so many hours that he usually took care of dinner. He was typically home well before I was.

Exercise? What's that? The closest thing I got to exercise was hiking up to my second story classroom. Up the stairs in the morning. Down the stairs to walk the kids to the cafeteria. Up the stairs to work in my room through lunch. Down the stairs to pick my class up from the cafeteria. Up the stairs to start the afternoon classes. Down the stairs at the end of the day to walk my class out the door. That doesn't include any of the ups and downs that happened during conference periods. Meetings. Copies. You would think that counts for something. But it doesn't. I was thin enough, but not because of exercise. I was thin because I wasn't eating. I was malnourished I'm sure.

Picture is not mine.
Source: http://www.desura.com/mods/star-trek-continuum/images/black-hole

Depression is black beyond all that is black. It's inky and deep. It's a black hole that sucks you in and it's devoid of all things.

A black hole has an event horizon. An object farther away than the event horizon can swing by the black hole and escape. It's trajectory will be affected greatly but it will not be swallowed into oblivion. An object at the event horizon can orbit the black hole without falling into it but also never escaping it. The object is locked in place, forever attached to the black hole. Never really falling prey to it but also never really being free of it. Anything that is inside the event horizon is doomed. It will orbit round and round getting ever closer to that infinitely small point of everything that is called a black hole. It will never escape. Doomed.

Depression is like that. There is a point of no return. As you approach depression you have the ability, the chance, the possibility of escaping it. You'll fall into a funk and your life will be changed some but you'll swing out of it and be on your way. Hopefully you'll never come across another black hole depression again.

It's possible that you can live your live at a balance point somewhere between completely depressed, clinically depressed, unable to function and might even kill yourself depressed, and living free of depression, a happy, fulfilled life. That emotional event horizon is probably like living a basically depressed life. Always in that state of wondering if this is all there is. Never truly satisfied with anything that life has to offer.

At that point of no return, though, everything changes. If you've ever approached it, then you know. It's a terrifying realization that you have slipped inside the event horizon and there is nothing you can do to stop the fall. Your perception of existence is warped, time is slowed, energy is pulled away. You can feel yourself detaching from the world. On a molecular level. There's the sense that the molecules in my hand are somehow not part of my hand. They are part of the molecules that make up the world. They are part of the world before they are a part of me. The matter that makes up our mundane existence takes priority over the matter that makes up my body. I don't know if that makes any sense at all.

Depression is deep. It's a hole that keeps going. You fall infinitely far and then you still have infinitely far to fall. You're falling into nothing. You're falling through nothing. Try to imagine what existed before the big bang. Nothing existed. But nothing is still something. Like zero. No. Nothing is nothing. If anything goes into that nothing, it is scattered into a million billion pieces. Anything that was me is torn apart, dissolved into nothingness.

Life as Lies

This past November I participated in National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to write 50,000 words or more for a new novel. It's hard and it's fun and the novel-wanna-be that I wrote needs a lot of editing or a recycle bin. Here's a small snippet from it that I rather like. It's from the perspective of my female main character and she is reflecting on her early college years, remembering her life when she was 18 or 19 years old.

No. I was not happy. I thought I was. I was having a great time, but I was manic and didn't know it. I had no idea what bipolar disorder was. I had never heard about it and 20 years passed before I was diagnosed with it.

At that time, I thought I was a normal college kid. I hadn't lost any friends yet. I wasn't failing my classes yet. Although, I was eating less and less frequently, drinking more and more often. That's the way it was for everyone. Right?

Yes, I thought I was happy. Pretending to be happy. Fake it 'till you make it. I think other people saw me as happy and having fun. Too much fun. Being irresponsible. I don't know.

I was numb - that lack of sensation that follows a tragedy, a trauma - but there had been no life event that would warrant such a reaction. I was unable to feel much more than empty, hallow, and disconnected.

I didn't feel disconnected from another person. I wasn't hallow because I lost an attachment or empty because I was missing someone. I was just empty.

I felt disconnected from the world. Like I was in this world but not really in this world. If that makes any sense at all. Think of it like a dream. At some point in many dreams you realize you are dreaming. You don't wake up. You don’t stop the dream. You notice and move on. But your dream version of yourself knows that leaving the dream is possible. Returning to reality is a reality and you can return to the dreams again later. Back and forth between dreaming and waking -- always recognizing the dream as a dream, a lie -- always recognizing the waking as reality, the truth. It was kind of like that. Only I could not ever wake up. I felt like I should be able wake up and at any instant appear in reality, in truth, and it would be in a place that was not this place. Of course, that's nonsense and on some level I knew it. Sometimes.

I felt the atoms on my skin. I saw the molecules of air. Not literally, but I was acutely aware of them - each one. When I touched something, I saw the atoms repelling one another. I understood that we never really touch anything. Our sense of touch is nothing more than the force of atoms attracting and repelling one another. It's a rather depressing view of the world I suppose. But that's how I saw it.

At the same time, I felt the connection to everything. No. I sensed, saw, the connections. Electrons in an atom are not confined to little circles around a nucleus, like the nice drawings in textbooks depict. Electrons are not points. They are not little dots running round and round like the monkey and the weasel.They are waves. And they extend to infinity. And that means everything is literally connected to everything else. All of existence is woven together.  It's a great tapestry made of electron waves. I saw it all. Sensed it all. It was clear to me. I understood. But I was not part of it. I was on the outside looking across this universe. I was an observer, only watching and seeing this world and all that happened in it. But I was not part of it. I could not interact with it.

I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like I'm trying to tell you that I'm from another planet or another dimension. I guess that's how it comes across. If you've never felt it before, it's understandable that you would likely come to that conclusion. I know I'm not from another planet. I know I'm not an alien or from another dimension. Intellectually I know that. Knew that. Still, I could never shake the feeling that this life was the lie.

Thanks for reading. I hope I captured some small part of the onset of a mental illness. Please share your thoughts and feelings about it. Constructive criticism is always welcome.