Lesson

Yesterday, I got a nice envelope from a friend --- she sent me a part of her local paper about NASCAR because she knows I'm a race fan.  It brightened my day more than I can express.  Because somebody thought about me.  Somebody remembered.

This incredibly black Pit which I've been mucking around in for all these months completely isolates me.  There's no energy, no interest in going out, in contacting people.  I have absolutely nothing to contribute to a conversation or a gathering.  Because I don't do anything.  Except spend my first couple of waking hours filling out new job applications and following up on old ones.

So people forget about me.  Maybe they would have forgotten anyway --- there's no way to know.  But it seems, it feels, like 90% of the people whom I could once count on just aren't there anymore.  They were good and loyal for a while, but after a bit, they got bored.  Disinterested.  They were getting nothing back from me, so they stopped sending anything my way.

Which only drove me deeper into the Pit.

I can't tell you how many letters/cards/notes I have intended to write, only to choose going back to bed, or staring blankly out the window for a while over telling someone I was thinking about them. I've been no better than my abandoners.  I shouldn't expect what I'm incapable of giving.

Two bloody years into this thing, though, I don't know what else to do.  For the last several months, I've performed for my children, pretending I felt better, laughing. . .  None of it has been true.  But they don't need the Yoke of Mom around their necks when they're each trying to get their own, independent lives going.

Performing, though, exhausts me.  And I am emotionally, and even physically, spent after every phone call or visit.  So, again, there's nothing to give anyone else.

The people who have left me aren't going to be reading this.  I wish I could have them back in my life, but my mind is incapable of strategizing, of figuring out a plan to re-connect.  Those of you who are reading this have not left me.  You have sent me newspaper clippings and interesting Web links and prayers and hugs and it is not hyperbole to say that some of those things came on days when I had a full bottle
of pills in one hand and a full glass of water in the other.  And those things made me put them down.

You have saved my life.

I don't know when I'm going to be well enough and strong enough to give you the thanks you deserve.  Just, please, know that I am so grateful to you for not letting me go.