Swing Low

Do you ever have those incredibly surreal moments when you realize: This is my life...?

I don't fully know how else to explain it, but pulling into my driveway after dropping off my younger sister, this is the feeling I get. I suppose I feel like this because I hope this is not how she will end up. She had her first string of anxiety attacks today.
That's how it started for me.
Maybe for her if things do get worse, the medications they have will work. Then she can feel a base level of normal instead of going through the manic ups and depressing lows that I do.

This is part of why I don't want children.

I love children, and the majority of my work is with them. Heck, the first book I wrote was a children's book. But biological children? Nope. I don't want them to have to face what I'm going through right now. I don't want them to have the potential of the future that I had from ages 18-24. Parts of it are bright, yes. There are lessons to be learned, yes. I am a stronger and more resourceful person, yes. But the pain of it all...A lot of times I'm not entirely convinced it was worth it.

There are things that I feel I appreciate and enjoy more than others. The smooth touch of keys on a keyboard, a faint cello in the background of a symphony, the look of the stars at night, the feeling of a brush on a canvas and the ability to lose hours and days in a painting, the ability to lose myself completely in a story -- becoming it, feeling it, living it...this is why I am so attached to The Giver by Lois Lowry. A world devoid of color, devoid of music, devoid of true emotion and feelings. A world where babies that are colicky or deformed or different are killed. A world I never would have been able to exist in.

There are other things I feel more than others. Depression, loss, exquisite sadness, weariness, fatigue, failure -- the list goes on and on. There are plenty of days where as I look at my surroundings I envision different ways I might die and be found. So far everything has been too messy, too dirty, and too ugly.

So here I sit. Realizing in a brief moment of clarity exactly where my life is, and hoping I will continue to enjoy living it.