Someone close to me mentioned the other day that I only have depressive episodes in my bipolar.  I never seem to have the highs but only suffer from the lows.  And I thought about that.  A lot.  In fact, I thought about it for weeks.  And the  truth is there is so little in this world to be excited or happy about, that sometimes it is just easier to be down.

I don’t mean to be a cynic, although I am.  I hate the fact that there is so little in my life tonight that makes me truly happy.  But the truth is life is hard.  The moment you think you got it down, it bites you in the ass.  The moment you think that you have a pattern, or even a path, something is thrown at you; quicker than the wind and harsher than the noon day sun.  I go through life expecting the horrible, because oftentimes that is what is there.  How is it, that we live this life and there are only seconds, pure fleeting moments of joy in a rather dreary and oftentimes painful day to day existence?

I don’t enjoy work.  I take it that I am not supposed to enjoy work.  If I enjoyed work than there would be something seriously wrong. I recognize this.  I live this. And I am able to handle my work and leave my work each day because I know this.

But there is so much else that isn’t so easy to leave once I clock out.  There are million little things that seem to exist just to trip me up: diseases, sickness, unfairness, hurt, inattention and most of all indifference.

I think the cruelest thing on earth is indifference.  The belief that no matter how much someone claims to love us, they either can’t show it, or just say the words to escape some other truth.  The feeling of someone not looking, not seeing us, but rather passing through us to get somewhere else.  To know without a shadow of a doubt that everyone has an agenda, therefore no one can take the time to actually love.

My children, they are the exception.  Every time I hear their voice, in laughter and sometimes in tears, I know that good or bad I am their mother.  There is power in that, there is acceptance in that.  And maybe that should be enough.

I am suppose to be getting better at my communication skills.  It is what my therapist wants.  Tonight I think of it all as a waste of time.  Could that be the disease? Sure.  But is it?

How do you beg? How do you prostrate yourself on your knees and ask for something that likely can’t be given? How do you explain to those who listen without hearing that your world, your very soul is dependent on something that is not there? And how do you explain the necessary reactions? The bury of oneself? The caution flags and warning lights that you keep front and center so no one can reach your soft core?

Life is about so many things.  I try to remember that it can be about love and forgiveness; but so often I think it is just about lost dreams.  Is that the price I pay to be an adult? Giving up not only the innocence of youth but the loss of the fairy tales?  And where does that leave me? Where in this world that once, when I was young, was so full of life and possibilities, do I find the ability to believe again?  Believe in myself, believe in those I love?

I accept life is unfair; I truly do.  You can’t live my life and not accept it.  There is always one more rape, one more beating, one more callous word that destroys you.  There is always one more death, one more birth, and one more tragic ending. Disney made his fortune bring the flip side of the coin to life; but the truth is no matter how many times I stand in the shadows of Cinderella’s castle, I am just the girl singing softly and wishing on a dream.

I don’t know how to change that.  I don’t know how to believe or have faith.  I look at my children and I almost want to shelter them so securely that they never feel this pain.  I can’t.  Pain is the price of having them in my life.  Giving them life does not mean that I get to have that life.  Selfishly I have to pray with every hope in my heart, that my children never find themselves in the dead of night, writing to a computer screen because that is the only way they can survive.