My Left Foot OR What A Hole We Find Ourselves In

A couple weeks ago, I fell into a hole.

Not the whimsical, Alice in Wonderland way, but in the I walked backward and cracked my foot way. Stupid hole.

What I thought was maybe a sprain turned out to be a dislocated ankle bone. Its one of those injuries that is deceptively not painful enough to denote how bad it is. I tried to hobble along for a week thinking it was just a sprain, inadvertently risking myself as the dislocated bone was precariously positioned over my arteries.

So now I am meant to lay in bed is some pandemic-themed version of rear window. This should be a time to write and reflect.

Instead I find I am unable to write.

Depression, for me, has been the ever-changing guest of my life. Each visit is a new hell to be involved in. The flavor of this Depression is not so pungent. It’s muted, and it is evident in the dearth of emotion and creativity I am used to being in.

A few months ago we upped my dosage of lithium because my anxiety was becoming untenable. I think, perhaps, that this type of light depression, a sort of emptiness, this pale imitation, is the neutered result. I think the medicine is keeping the worst of it away.

It’s a gratifying thought, and it explains this feeling, or non-feeling, that II have had for weeks now. I can’t complete projects, I am drained. I am behind on deadlines. We are in a pandemic. We are in between homes. I have a dislocated ankle.

And deeper I sink. That hole I fell in was there before I spotted it.

At the moment, I’m climbing myself out. Clawing at my little goals and projects in the hopes that I won’t be someone unreliable. I hate that this disease does this to me. That it makes it difficult to be consistent. But here I am again, digging myself out of this hole. I hope it’ll be a while before I fall in again, or that if I do fall, it remains this shallow.