I'm okay

By NASA (NASA Image of the Day) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Really.  No more rash.  Not much in the way of utter despair.  I still don't know whether I have a job or not: my email to my supervisor on Friday prompted her to respond by telling me to take Saturday off as well.  That does not give me high hopes for my workday on Monday, but you never can tell.

Of course I spent all of Friday in a blind panic.  And Saturday I spent several hours therapeutically baking.  Seriously.  I spent 3 hours making caramel–from scratch–for my chocolate and caramel covered shortbread cookies.  Now I'm somewhat uncomfortably numb with just the-tiniest-of-hints-of-blind-mad-panic-buried-under-about-ten-feet-of-generic-muzziness, but, you know, essentially fine.  Not that different than one of my recent "good" days.  Terrible if I compare myself to a few years back, but I don't have the stomach to do that to myself right now.

It occurs to me that I've spent a lot of time, these last several years, reacting to things outside of my control rather than acting on what I can.  A bad habit, one that I must unlearn if I'm to have any chance of a real life.  It's a bit of cowardice too.  Not making a move until it's forced on me.  It's because I'm afraid of making the wrong move.  There are so many choices.  Also a bit of my depression-caused laziness.  I mean, if nothing's going to change for the better, why make a change at all?  A stupid way to look at things that probably boils down to fear.  Fear of being rejected, fear of pain, fear of failure.  Like my life doesn't make it glaringly obvious that doing nothing is a much more thorough way of failing than trying and not succeeding.

Now, there's no doubt in my mind that things can get worse.  Every time I've thought that I've hit bottom something has happened that drops me a bit further, so I'm not going to tempt fate that way.  However, I think there are more good possibilities at this point than bad.  There's more up than down, is what I'm saying.

So what do I do about my life?

The simplest answer is to take some kind of action.  MOVE.  I have this whisper of an idea wiggling around in the back of my mind.  Something I want to do, some action to take.  I can't quite articulate it, and I can't quite figure out what it is, but it's there, a lonely beacon calling me thither.

I have no road, to guideposts, no map, just a small, dim, and flickering light in the far distance.  I am afraid.  I am so very afraid, but this I know to be true: if I stay where I am I will drown, and if I go I will likely be torn apart and remade.  There will be pain and great difficulties, but there will be life.
It's not a hard decision to make—I want to live, I want to move—but I just can't seem to take that first step.

That is something that must change.

So I'm going to work on changing it.