Moving On

This time last year I had a terrible case of insomnia.  I was depressed and miserable and stressed out beyond anything I felt I could get out from under.  I didn't sleep in my bed for months.  The only place I could even lose consciousness periodically was the sofa in the living room.  with the TV on.  all night long.  The ABC cable news channel sucks eggs at 4 a.m. in case you were curious.  CNN was the only channel with a consistent visual output and could lull me to sleep at Volume level 4.  just enough noise to keep my thoughts from talking at me.  I could not be alone with my thoughts very often because they were dark nasty things that made me wish I was disappeared a lot of the time. 

Not dead exactly.  but gone.  somewhere else.   away from every stupid thing I'd ever done.

I looked into the possibility of moving to Australia.  Or Costa Rica.  I really did.  it's not as easy as I would have liked.

And the words wherever you go, there you are rang in my head all the time.  taunting me.

And the words when you're going through hell, keep going rang in my head all the time too.  my inner drill sergeant.

I don't know if anyone really knew how awfully I wanted to disappear.  I told them, sure, but joking.  Always defaulting on the sarcasm because who could really believe that I would want to disappear?  Not even me all the way evidently because that's also when I started planning the high school reunion, like, setting up committee meetings and calling venues and stuff.  How could I be serious about being gone if I was laying the foundation for being so...here?

I almost wished I had an excuse to be relocated in the Witness Protection Program.  I Googled and everything.  I don't have an excuse.  I looked into giving up my identity without federal help.  Just running away.  Changing my name completely.  Except...I'm gonna go from being Silver to something else?  That was the real kicker.  I couldn't give up my name.

Even with all the hell that seemed attached to it at the time.

Wherever you go, there you are.

But lightning strike if I didn't think about it.  hard.  The escaping part anyway.  I didn't want to think about the actual dealing with it part.  And I certainly didn't write about it here at the time.  Along with my other mantras this time next year it will all be different played on a loop.  I would have rather focused on a distant point out on the horizon where all of it was behind me and I could finally breathe again.  And it is behind me now.  but not that distantly.  and not without a great deal of effort.

What was the secret?  How did I possibly step back from the edge of no return?

I faced the stupid shit I had to do and did it.  Now, I know a lot of this *just* got finally taken care of after an extraordinary amount of procrastination on my part, but there was a lot more to it than what happened in the month of September.  And I wouldn't even have had September's successes without doing all the dumb stuff I had to do before then. 

So that's the secret.  Do the dumb stuff you have to do.  And do the stuff you'd much rather run away from because it feels like it could crush you it's so hard and scary.

Do it.  And be done with it.

Wherever you go, there you are.
When you're going through hell, keep going.
This time next year it will all be different.