Entry 3 – November 3, 2024

The harshest reality is knowing that the outside world keeps going even when your world has come to an abrupt halt. Even when I’ve picked myself up off the floor from every depressive episode before, it still shocks me when I realize the days still passed without me. Time keeps edging closer to the darkness and everyone else moves on like it’s another day. 

To everyone else it is just another day. 

Ryan and I left the hospital on Monday evening, later than expected. He still couldn’t walk, but he insisted he should go home to sleep instead of the hospital bed. This stay likely cost us another $20k on top of the first one. Our neighbor, Emily, was the only one around that late to help me get him inside. 

Have you ever tried to walk with a 200lbs weighted vest in a swimming pool? I haven’t, but I imagine that what Emily and I experienced on Monday night was similar.

There is an ache in my soul that I cannot seem to soothe. I spent so many hours and days wasting away on my cell phone or in meetings. The hours go by. The time slips away. Suddenly, I’m 35 with a career and a husband. I don’t have a reliable social life. If I’m not at home, I’m at work or the gym. I have no desire for children. All I want to do is spend time in the gym and write. It’s obsessive. 

I’ve been convinced that I’m too tired to do anything more. I should spend my down time on a screen or in bed. The quality time I’m seeking is fleeting. I have to try each time in order to focus on the present, but the ever approaching end of the road is looming. What is this all for?

Then everything stops.

At least everything stops for you. For everyone else, the present builds upon itself while you fade behind. The only way to catch up seems to be to ignore all the space in between. That space where you were dragging yourself out of bed to care for every other person in your home while attempting to heal yourself. I’m still on the floor, but my body has kept moving forward with time. Somehow I’ve managed to be in two places at once. My therapist would have told me I was dissociating, and she would be right. I haven’t stopped these daytime astral projections. What clever name could you call this? I’m not sleeping, and I’m far from daydreaming. It’s an out of body experience. As if I’m using a remote control to guide my body while my mind stays asleep in bed. It’s the opposite of astral projection. My soul has left an astral indentation on my bedroom floor, and I can’t quite pick her back up. 

Remember when Peter Pan’s shadow kept running away? I need Wendy to sew my soul back to my body. That won’t happen until Ryan gets better. I so miss being able to be a real person instead of this crumbling shell facade, pretending to have it together. 

I’m falling apart, and I’m terrified that we won’t be able to recover from this.