Dark Secrets

The sun is setting earlier. The days are getting shorter. The tan that I some how managed to get this summer is beginning to fade. Its coming. I've know for the past two weeks that the inevitable was coming. The tenor of my emotions is changing with the seasons. Changing with the school year. I knew. I dreaded it. I tried to hold out. But it came anyway. Like a flood. Like a wave washing over me. Darkening my life. Blurring the edges of my blessings. Dimming the smiles of my children. Invading. Invading the carefully built feeling of normalcy. Of happiness. Of joy.

Now it sits there. Heavy. Dark. Changing the world. Changing my view. Reminding me that I am not normal. That I do not feel the normal hills and valleys of life. Heavy enough to hold my feet. To create a feeling of walking through quicksand. The hard you try to move forward, the more it pulls you under. The bricks it ties to my feet so that I can not even run from it like I would a stressful day. I wish I could. I wish I could just run away from it. I know people who can. I know their are those where running is enough to put it behind them. To hold it off. To keep it in check.

The abnormal sadness that somehow reaches out to touch every aspect of my life. That creates gaping holes in my existence. That voids all things good. The sadness that is so often a constant companion has been missing this summer. It was easy to feel normal. To want to leave my house. To reach out and make new friends. To feel like everyone else. Still having stressful days. Still feeling joy and sorrow. But all in check. All in the realm of normalcy. I knew it was too much to ask for it to stay this way.

And of course, with this feeling comes the feeling of doubt. The wondering about what I am doing wrong. What commandment have I missed. What am I doing that would bring these feelings rushing in. And the guilt. The guilt over what this does to my family. How much harder it is for them. How little good I do for the Lord in reaching out to others. And the guilt of being completely incapable of keeping that one commandment. The one that defines our very existence... men are that they might have joy.

Thanks for enduring this. For giving me this forum to express myself. Words have always had a healing power for me. The ability to form this into some type of structure. Some form. It always makes it easier to bear.