Wonderful Horrible

I’m a person of extremes. I run hot and cold. There’s an oscillation from productive and organized to melodramatic trainwreck that I go through. The crazier things are, the quicker and steeper the cycles. When my life is calm, the wavelength slows until stiff peaks stretch into rolling hills.

Life is crazy right now, for so many different reasons. This year, thus far, has been wracked with pain, loss and sickness, financial strain, and heartache. Sadly, I’m not speaking only of myself- it seems far reaching and all-encompassing, a blanket of misery, thin but still heavy, laying over everything and everyone as far as I can see. It’s gray and dingy and scratchy. The warmth of it is a little too much, like when you wake up with a light film of sleep sweat on your skin. Getting out of bed gives you the chills because you’re actually damp all over.

Despite how dire and dark things have been, incredible things are happening all around us. There is love, there is comfort, camaraderie, the depth of old friendship, the sweetness of new friendship. Stolen moments full of fun, or meaning, or the simple pleasure of existing. Windows of hope in a sea of futility. How does one process exquisite pain and joy at the same time?

My house, figuratively and literally, is too small not to bump into pink elephants. The strange thing is that the peaks and valleys are overlapping each other, running in together, coming so furiously and with such force that I often feel weather worn by the end of the day.

I would suppose that the former drives us to the latter; we look for comfort, meaning, camaraderie and fun in the midst of uncertain times. Somehow that doesn’t lessen the intensity of the experience. If anything, it magnifies the sharpness of it all. I am deeply grateful for my life, filled to the gills with worry and sorrow, and fiercely determined to keep it all from collapsing at my feet. All of that fitting into one ragged breath and racing pulse, over and over, all day and night.  A constant ache as the gratitude and fear keep my heart strings pulled tight.

Just like a harp, or perhaps more fitting, a fiddle, the sounds made by pulling those strings is hauntingly beautiful. A ballad fully formed, with love and hope and sorrow and desperation in a few chorus and verses. The kind of song that you listen to with the windows thrown open on a late night drive, letting the lyrics and melody bring tears to your eyes and a lump in your throat.

There’s a time warp quality to it, as weeks seem to take days, but minutes take hours. There’s an inertia, a resistance in every detail. Knowing that insomnia will only make things worse, but being unable to will myself to rest. Knowing that emotion and panic will drain my energy, but being unable to stand as the waves of desperation and frustration knock my feet out from under me and drag me face first into the shore. Understanding that I need to eat more, to eat better, but not feeling well or not hungry for anything.

Moments of respite come in irregular intervals. I’m hungry and everything tastes good, I’m sleepy and tired and the bed feels perfect underneath me, the weight of the covers calms my thoughts and I sleep long and deep. Distance is gained from the emotional storm and I’m offered a logical aerial view of my life, thoughts and feelings. Hope bubbles just under the blanket, a strong current pushing against it but doing little more than creating pockets and ripples that lack the force and fruition to peel it back, wad it up, put a good hole in it.

When people ask me how I am, or how I’m doing, and they really want an answer, I generally say that I’m here, or that I’m hanging on, or that it could be worse but it sure as hell could be better.

Would you understand what I meant if I just said wonderful horrible?

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