I Understand and I Wish to Continue

You know that warning message you sometimes get when you're making your way through the blogosphere.  Content advisory.  You may not like what you're about to embark on, so click as you will, but don't say we didn't warn you.

I understand and I wish to continue.  Seven words, so simple and straightforward, yet they form a suitcase whose meaning would take a week to unpack.   The phrase resonates, a mantra of sorts.  Om.
   

I understand and I wish to continue.  It's not easy to rock a mood disorder like a boss.  There are days when I just crumple up into a ball, like the sheets of paper I used to wad up in disgust and frustration after trying to write the first sentence of pieces that started aimlessly and went nowhere fast.   Under the desk with the dust bunnies and the wrapper from my Atkins breakfast bar.   Don't mind me.  I'm not here anyway.  Or I won't be as soon as I finish giving this revolver a blow job.  KIDDING.  I don't have any firearms.  

I understand and I wish to continue.  But sometimes, just barely.   I really don't have a choice, do I?  Having extricated myself from a toxic alliance with a drunk in denial, having renounced my eldest's destructive behavior, I need to remain present for the people still in my life.   The struggle is real, and for once, I'm not being sarcastic.

My teenage son has been ill with a cold for several days, alternating between fever and chills.   Today was record heat, and when I got home from work, I could see he was miserable.  I knew what I had to do.  I changed out of the pjs I had already put on (as I often do because HOME FINALLY) and headed to OSH.  Two box fans, please.  Except for apparently Thursday evening is Happy Hour at OSH.  I am not even kidding right now.  There is a greeter handing out shopping bags.  There is party food.  There is a DJ.  The music is loud and terrible.  No one seems to want to sell hardware.  

It is truly the stuff of nightmares for an exhausted, depressed, overwhelmed mother with a sick teenager at home.  I will my rising anxiety and irritation not to go full panic and rage.  I talk myself down, it's okay, hang in there, let's find the fans and GTFO.  Which I did, notwithstanding the fact that they were difficult to locate and all the personnel were enjoying the festivities so I couldn't ask anyone even if wanted to (which I never do, it's weird I know, deal with it) because I was not going any closer to that crowd and that music than I had to.   I located two box fans (thank ye gods and monsters) and stood in a line that was four times as long as it should have been, as all the green-vested individuals were relaxing with cups of lemonade by the indoor cabana instead of DOING THEIR FUCKING JOBS at the checkout.  Got those fans, got em home, got em in the got-damned windows, and got my feverish son a cool breeze.  Like. A. Boss.

The point is that, despite a depression that currently has knocked me flat like that rogue wave at the beach that leaves you with water up your nose and sand in your pubes, I understand and I wish to continue.  And sometimes, somehow, I pull it together long enough to be able to.  

I read a comment on my Facebook page the other day that I can't get out of my mind.  The commenter had run into an old acquaintance who told her, "I remember you.  You're that girl that cried all the time."  Which was a horrible thing to say, of course.  People are assholes.  But I thought to myself,  "There it is.  There it fucking is.  I'm that girl who cries all the time."  

I understand.  And despite that understanding, against my better judgment, I wish to continue.