The Darkness

Down in the dumps today/tonight. Not really sure why but I do know that I have been experiencing an almost crushing loneliness lately, an almost debilitating alienation. I have no one. My mother is immersed in grief and her own issues, my sisters have their families, my father is dead and gone. I’m living up here on this farm by myself and well, it gets tough some times. I don’t have anyone to share life with. It’s all wake up>feed the dogs>facebook>go to work>come home>feed the dogs>facebook>sleep…over and over and over again. What’s the point? I’m blessed to live here on this land but I don’t have anyone to share it with. The longing in me becomes so painful at times…a physical and psychological paralysis. I have a darkness inside that reappears and makes itself known from time to time. I’ve lived inside this darkness for so long sometimes I can’t even recognize it’s there. When I notice myself becoming angry a lot…that is when I remember this darkness inside me, this sadness, this dis-ease. I have to confess to being resentful and jealous of other people, couples, families, etc. I see people posting on facebook about going on vacation and bbq’ing and doing all sorts of things and I feel like I’m missing out, like I’m on the losing end. For me the summer and any holiday is just work work work work work work. Christ I hate myself sometimes. I realize how completely immature and full of shit I am. I try to be better. I try to be grateful. But then my mind goes off on me and I feel all small again. It really is crazy. And I wonder why I don’t have someone. Is it because I’m a self-centered narcissist? Is it because I’m not ready to love or be loved? Fuck if I know.

There are times when I make friends with my loneliness, when I make nice with the pain inside. When I pretend it’s just a part of life, just a part of growing up and getting older. Maybe that really is the deal. And God knows I have a lot to be grateful for…but there is emptiness inside me, a hole in my heart that’s reserved for a woman. Fuck if I know who she is or if she even exists. What woman would sincerely want to come live with me out here on this farm anyway? The closest Target is nearly an hour away! (Still cracking jokes through the tears.)

Well, day two (or three) of the darkness. Stopped writing last night cause I was sick of my own bs. I’m sitting here wasting time in the morning before work. Hoping someone will comment on one of my posts on facebook. So embarrassing. So sad. And then this raw honest vomiting of it all out onto the flickering laptop screen. I don’t want to go to work today. I want to disappear. I want to drive out to the open wastes of Wyoming, park and just start walking towards the horizon. Once you’re bitten by the bug you’re never the same; the insanity bug, the got-to-move bug, the restless bug, the dis-eased bug, the ambition bug, the never-be-satisfied bug, the-gnawing-scratching-emptiness-inside-that-blacks-out-all-joy bug. It’s an infection that lasts forever. It gives a person good stories but it’ll also drive you fucking bat-shit crazy if you let it.

So today, write schedule, take inventory, lead kitchen staff(s), put on a good face and pretend you don’t feel like you’re dying inside; the great masquerade, the great charade, the ego parade. Some days it feels like you're waiting to die, waiting to be snuffed out, waiting for the breath to stutter, gasp and expire out. You feel like a ghost, like a spirit wanderer, like a gypsy soul trapped in this flesh and bone cage. I can’t tell you how much of my life I’ve felt just like that. And it ebbs and flows like a tidal creek, like a low country inlet, like a rising and falling sound shallow against the sea. I’ve gone months, YEARS it seems with little relief and then POOF! out of nowhere the sunlight shines down once again, the waters recede and I again feel comfortable and content in my skin of flesh and core of bones and tissue. The light lasts for intermittent periods of time, sometimes just a day, sometimes weeks and months go by with blissful ignorance of the blackness festering inside me. The times when I am the happiest are the hardest to take. I forget the depression. I forget the black stains on my heart. I laugh and am easy-going and kind. I am selfless, kind, and generous. Along the way something shifts (it often involves a woman) and the light begins to be slowly blotted out by the darkness, like a planet being eclipsed by its moon, the shadow creases the face and spreads exponentially faster until the entire sphere is enveloped in the absence of light. It seems to stay that way for a punctuated moment in time before the light begins peeking back in from the other side, the light burns the darkness away and I feel alive once again. I feel at home here on these fields of green, under these baby blue skies, beneath this canopied earth.