Melancholia hangs from me, slow and sticky like the sap from a tree. It is not quick, and I am less swift because it catches me, holding me fast, making me struggle to loosen its devastating grip.
Tonight, it has me encased, mummified and immovable. I feel myself breathing, my heart beating, but to feel — all is sadness and an unexplainable pain buried somewhere deep in my soul, a place beyond my spirit.
Slowly it fills my inner voids and my mind with a gummy pitch that refuses a happy life. It becomes embedded, making the desire to continue the struggle pointless.
So I fake it until I make it, but even that sometimes fails me.
Whiskey melts it temporarily. Beyond that, I can only wait to be released back to myself, where I again recognize myself and the person I truly am.
But ‘who I am,’ is a subject that is altogether different and as unanswerable as the melancholia that will rushingly drip from me one day. My answer will come when I am least expecting it, and I may not recognize it when it arrives.
What keeps driving headlong is knowing that you feel the same some days.
The Old Blog in the Desert 