Sunday morning I awoke to find a swelling sadness gnarling and mewling at the corner of my heart. I don’t know where it came from, but I know it has been there for a while now. It’s a beast. A beast that I wrestle and defeat and am defeated by. One that I bruise and batter and scream at and yet, it never seems to shy away for long. It’s stubbornness is comparable to my own, and like two exhausted boxers we pull from our respective corners and fight it out again and again and again; a stalemate with no referee.
The beast is always there. A cold reminder that I’ll never quite be normal or completely happy. I can hear him banging and burning against my brain, trying desperately to wiggle and squirm his way inside and all I can do is resist and hope that one day he’ll give up.
I can feel him. He feels like the frost laden mornings in October. The time of year when the cold hangs just a bit longer in the morning, and settles in just a little earlier in the evening. The beast is the feeling of impending winter, when the sun falls from the sky and we are left in darkness and snow and we are furthest from rescue. He finds me in the places that I go to hide and lick my wounds because he thinks that I welcome his company. He thinks that I need him. I don’t, but again and again, he comes to witness the breakdown.
Him and I are at an impasse. There will be no solution, but I still hope that some day I’ll find one. Sometimes, just sometimes, hope can be enough to see a person through winter.