sanity log #1

 "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"-Kurt Vonnegut                 

I can feel a physical shift after crying, a sweet calm-after-the-storm, dust-settling clarity that I never know exists until I reach it. What's tricky is that I don't know I'm holding my breath until I let it go. When I'm depressed, I don't see it as depression, but a false clarity. I see it as reality finally hitting me, and so I wear it like an ugly cardigan and pretend it's a blood orange Michael Kors blazer, shifting my tastes to fit this "objectivity." Because really, all I want to do is exist on the same plane as everyone else. I too often feel like my thoughts and emotions are at a completely different altitude than those of my peers, so it's difficult to converse with them. I constantly feel like there's a hurricane brewing under my skin, and it rushes and rushes until I can't even hear myself think anymore, least of all hear anything else. But when I cry, it's gone. But it's always a matter of time until it collects again, starts spiraling and spiraling, just gradually enough for me not to feel it coming. Like a lobster in the cooking pot.

I cried today, but it was a different kind of cry. It didn't feel torn from my lungs like the first one, it wasn't violent or sharp. It wasn't a downpour. It was almost a happy cry, relief. The tears rolled down my cheeks, involuntary, but cathartic. I can feel myself finally beginning to heal.

And I feel in control, at least for today. I chose to write this, not out of knee-jerk escapism, but out of inspiration, knowing that I need to listen to Vonnegut and keep note of when I feel this way. Here's sanity log 1.