Haze

Greetings.

This will be rather lackluster and depressing, I warn you to begin with, and there won't be a happy ending. It's been awhile since I've felt passionate about anything, hence the serious writing hiatus. I feel like things are falling apart.

"The center does not hold." (--"The Stand", Stephen King)

It's more than a feeling of being overwhelmed, because I'm really not. I have handled everything in stride thus far, I believe. The thickness inside my head makes me feel somewhat insulated, as if I have earplugs in all the time. The haziness makes me feel like there's a cloak of fog covering everything in front of me, and the air is palpable but not pliable. Yet there's this whining, itching, high-pitched, searing, laser-focused pain somewhere inside of me that I can't quiet, can't scratch, can't soothe. It's not physical, it's emotional. Maybe it's spiritual. Maybe it's violently emotional due to a lack of being spiritual. One thing's for sure:

I can't take much more of it.

I find myself filled to the brim with what I deem "incorrect" emotions. Anger, bitterness, resentment, hatred, jealousy, rage, sadness, depression, envy, greed, disappointment, hopelessness. I picture myself as a little lab rat being slowly poisoned in my own environs, spinning aimlessly along on a wheel, frantically racing myself, busying myself, torturing myself by going nowhere at the same time as those who have the upper hand are feeding me various new evils, day by day. Periodically, I feel sentient enough to wonder "is this ever going to end"? before I jump right back on my wheel and pedal my feet vigorously, playing their game.

I hate my job situation.
I hate my physical body.
I hate my lack of ability to do anything with my writing that amounts to a career.
I hate my infertile internal organs.
I hate the drama that surrounds my daily life.
I hate selfish people.
I hate my inability to focus on the positive.
I hate my anxiety.
I hate my constant drowning feeling.
I hate how every time things seem to look up, something crashes down unexpectedly.
I hate that every time the phone rings, I expect bad news.
I hate that I can't look at someone else's baby without crying.
I hate the way pregnant customers hold their belly while they order lattes.
I hate my consumption with rage each time I beg God to be pregnant and I'm not.
I hate when people give me advice on getting pregnant, as if I might not be doing it right.
I hate when people who barely know me nonchalantly say not to worry about it, it'll happen.
I hate when people refer to the kids we have as "Steve's kids" or my "stepkids".
I hate that if I can't get pregnant, it will affect me more than it will my husband.
I hate that I am filled with all this hate.

I am beginning to hate leaving the house. I feel like there's nothing good out there for me anyhow, so why subject myself to the torture? Why keep running on the wheel? Why keep eating the poison? It's all to the same end, is it not? Whether rich or poor, happy or hopelessly depressed, we all die eventually and we all return to the dust from whence we came.

Sporadically, hedonism makes perfect sense to me, but I try to push those feelings down because I know in my heart that what I just said isn't true -- it's not all to the same end. It's in the living. It's how I live my life. It's what I stand for. It's the kind of person I'm supposed to be, not the kind I've become because I'm too lazy to do it right. It's who I believe in. It's not about me, it's about everyone else. It's about surviving this day-to-day crap so that I can appreciate what's at the end of the road more fully.

But all of this knowledge that I have, it's locked up behind a little door in my soul right now. I can walk it like a dog on a leash, bring it out when I need to for the sake of others, but I can't let it run free inside of me. There's something holding it back right now. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there are boundaries inside of me. One of those invisible fences. Sometimes I think I'm on the right track, and something happens to shock me and knock me back a step or two, and I get that sinking feeling again that nothing I do matters, and why should I even try.

I hate it.

I'm pretty sure I warned you at the beginning that this one wouldn't have a happy ending.

Stephanie Jean