The four stages of?

Happiness;

This out of reach, this far off distance, this unattainable, unimaginable thing. Like a star. The things that shine bright from an incomprehensible distance. I know that they’re there, in a vast void, I know their beauty is a real thing. But the greater mass of them I cannot reach for or understand or know as intimately as what they exude. A light that doesn’t go out but cannot be held onto.

I haven’t felt much genuine happiness as an adult. I can recall pure bliss, that of a child living a splendid childhood. I can recall graduating college, then my sister’s graduation. I can recall a growth inside me, cell recurrence, metastasized emotion, benign to the body, ruination to the brain. I was absorbing a truth, life was now about navigating my own survival. Any remnants of childhood were certainly dust. That was the new reality I was dragging my feet towards. My feet did not want to carry me there.

I don’t know what I hate more. That damn fish that crawled out of the water. The European countries that gave us capitalism. My parents for conceiving me. Or maybe I despise the Big Bang at the core of it all. Every cause and reaction, everything that was set in motion to put me in a windowless office behind a computer screen at a job I don’t want. I know hate and anger and grievance and stress well. I may now only be comprised of all of them. I imagined my grown up self so differently. I thought that I would always be happy. I dreamt of an adulthood contrary to the one I’ve lived, and it makes me infinitely sad.

Isolation;

Does it come from a place of feeling too emotionally distraught to be able to relate to anyone? Does it come from the very human barrier of not being able to wholly know anyone other than yourself? Does it come from a wavering uncertainty of whether or not you can truly even know yourself?

Or is it simpler than that? Something missing. Is determining what is missing ever simple? I could create a tutorial; how to fill a space with something when you don’t know what it is you need to fill it with. Materials: cement mix and water.

I would have thought being forced to stay indoors would have devastated my mental health. Severely depressed and anxious, stuck in an apartment with only a husband. A husband is not a healer. Everything should go wrong, everything should spoil, sour inside walls. Jobs lost. Tingling fear of what would become. Restricted to only 660 square feet. Approaching an event horizon I wouldn’t mind falling into forever, knowing now what I now know.

Liberation;

I walked a fine line and then I’m on the side where grass is greener. Where it smells like summer again. Reacquainted with a few feelings I used to be closer to. The sun rises and sets and I am, in a sense, totally free.

In confinement I felt freedom, exactly where I thought I wouldn’t find it. It appeared where I thought crippling anxiety and overwhelming depression would manifest instead. There was no captivity to all the things I was breaking small sweats over.

While I couldn’t do whatever I wanted in totality, I was beholden to no one. My time was entirely my own to do, mostly, whatever I wanted to do with it. I had time to immerse myself into hobbies, into relaxation. I had time for things I often did not have, and once again, do not have time for. I wasn’t too exhausted to do chores regularly, to live in the clean space I wanted to live in. I never once felt guilty for having “lazy” days.

Along with reclamation of my time, I had financial freedom. For the first time in my entire life I had disposable income and wasn’t worried about treating myself or helping others. Not nearly rich, but able to pay all bills while paying down debt, spending money on things typically out of my price range, and being able to donate to people who weren’t as lucky as I was.

How beautiful, my new sleeping habit. Seeing the sun set, seeing the sun rise. Napping as the human body is intended to. How beautiful, not being constantly tired and more tired and endlessly tired. How freeing, how liberating, how joyous, to be the owner of me, my time, my life.

Heartbreak;

O! The intangible thing! It weighs nothing but still suppresses the spine.

There was fear, could we live off of unemployment once the extra money was suspended? Could we afford to sustain this lifestyle? Would the state find out I didn’t return the call of an employer who wanted to hire me and cease benefits?

With the heaviest feet and heart and mind, I was forced out of a world that had brought me so much comfort. True, honest, real, valid peace. There was so much more that I wanted to do, to try to accomplish. I wasn’t ready. I would have never been ready. I could have stayed in my serenity until the end of me.

My bones haven’t rested the way they deserve to since going back to work.

I am bitter.

I am heartbroken.

I am ruined.

I am dismayed that this is my wound when others have lost so much more.

I am tired, so very tired, endlessly tired.