It’s midnight and I can feel the slide toward depression starting to happen – or at least creep up on me. I don’t know how exactly to describe how this feels. It’s kind of like gears are slowing down and something inside me is sinking. You know like a steampunk elevator with fancy hydraulics so when it runs out of steam it doesn’t suddenly bottom out on you – although that has happened to me before too. I’m hoping it’s not a total crash. I’m hoping I’m just going back to baseline and just land gently on my feet. Maybe even rest a bit in the grass.

It’s Christmas though, would have been nice to have picked up a second wind for that and sail with it. Just minus the anger. Even in depression there is anger for me.

It’s just always there, all the time, right below the surface. A slithering thing in the water. I’m always watching it. I have to watch it. Watching it keeps it in there. It’s exhausting. I look away for a second and it doesn’t take much to lure it out, snapping and biting and breathing fire and God knows what else. Then you have to beat it back in – with a spoon! Because you don’t want to hurt it. That only makes it worse. And so it just continues like that.

Artwork by Maxa-art on DeviantArt

But I think as I get older, the beast is getting tired with it like me. Less fire and biting. Not so much of the rearing its ugly head with hellish screaming. Now its more snapping with smoke. Big ugly stink eyes staring at people from the surface. That sort of thing. It still has its fire, just less inclined to use it.

Although I must say the two weeks of Mondays I had not too long ago the beast went rampant. Fire and all. Fuck that shit. I admit I tossed the spoon and went for the ride. I’m not even sure if I want to bother with finding the spoon or just get a new one. Hell for that matter if the beast would stop eating my spoons, that would be great. Yeah, I get shit done when I’m angry but I swear I burn up twice as many spoons in the process. Could be worse. Could be getting NOTHING done. If nothing else, it’s really good at being a call to arms and rallying my ass into action.

My protector, my prisoner, my jailor, my best friend and companion since childhood, the beast within me… why must you torment and comfort me so? What would my life be without you?

But tonight anxiety has my ear, the little worm that it is. Chewing with its mouth open the shit I don’t want to think about much less hear. I don’t want to think about my husband showing up who the fuck knows when sometime tomorrow. I don’t want to think about how he will divide the boys up, refusing to spend time with them as a group, and isolate them one by one the way he does and make a big deal about how he is spending time with them. I don’t know maybe it was the way I was raised, but that’s not how families work in my head but that’s the way he has always been. It’s what his father does to him and his sister and it’s creepy as fuck if you ask me. Because the entire time he with you he acts like you are the favorite. His father does anyway. That’s not right and it creates friction in a serious way. I see it between my husband and his sister all the time. It’s like Spy vs. Spy going on all the time non-stop. My husband? Has favorites and doesn’t hide it. Little Bear can do no wrong. Tuxedo Cat can do no right. And he’s just got to be super pals with Scholar Owl – and I don’t know how many times I’ve caught “don’t tell your mother” which of course I fucking explode on. There will be no secrets like that in this house. That’s bullshit. Nothing I say or do seems to keep this in check either. And then he goes back to the Army and I spend AT LEAST 3 months fixing this shit and about the remaining 3 months before he comes back again is spent smoothing it all out. Only for him to come back and fuck it all up again.

And there is the anger again. It stirs. It breathes. It keeps my head above the surface. I no longer feel like I’m sinking. For now. But I am tired. I shouldn’t have to burn away my spoons just to keep from drowning as I watch my family get sucked into chaos I can’t prevent. I already burned too many just to get us moved and I haven’t finished getting us settled in. I regret now wishing for the hypomania to end. Just hang on for a little while longer. Burn just a little brighter. I’m not ready for that dark place just yet. Need a little more time. Please. Just until he leaves. I’ll go quietly then. Sleep in the shadows. But not now. Not yet. I’ll fight with every spoon I have.