Shades of Gray | Sad Girl on Parade

I find myself resigned to shades of gray these days, no longer interested in the stark contrast of blacks and whites in a world that makes no sense any which way. Not two weeks ago, I found myself curled tightly into a blanket, crying softly (and then violently) about the ways I wished to end my life and what the letters would have to say to help them understand… I’m tired, I’m very tired. And I have help, I’ve had so much help. I’ve been healing and healing and breaking and healing and breaking to heal and break some more, and on and on it seems to go, and I am so very tired.

A collection of thoughts after another bathroom-floor kinda night (…week… month… year?)

The night unfolded into another day, and then another, and here is the collection of mellow thoughts I have to show for it. Maybe there’s some comfort and connection in it for you as you read, or maybe it’s just an outlet… another stubborn beat of the drum that never ceases: I am here, I am here, I am here.

My favorite necklace made up of gold flakes, a bullet casing, and a bee. Get it? | Photography by Rachel Renee

It’s amusing to me how, every single time I find myself in a hopeless abyss of agony by my own design, some tiny external thing can bring me back from that edge into fits of laughter (and usually some sort of twisted humor). No matter how many times I walk that line, I’m shocked to realize how close the edges are between death and delight. How one more hour might have been the end, and a two minute conversation might buy another entire year.

When I find myself still breathing after a moment I honestly didn’t expect to make it through, I think an awful lot — in an oddly peaceful way — about the things that generate sadness and joy for me. (Most often, I find they are the same. Is that strange?)

I think of artists.

My sister is an incredible painter. I wish I could translate my thoughts to images on paper that could be shown, seen, and shared in the way that she does.

I think of the longing.

I want someone to be so gentle, so earnest with me that I share for joy and wanting to, not out of obligation and knowing I should let the support in rather than risk allowing dear ones to feel responsible or angry that I left this world too soon, too easily.

I think of the triggers.

I hate the way another woman’s name can stick in my brain forever when it’s put there in just the right way. I wonder if I have been with too many men or too few, for this to bother me so, and if the others ever cry for this reason too.

Money, always money. I recently learned about an author named John Varley at the recommendation of a bookish genius. It gives me a strange sense of hope, but also dismay, to see that the financial cycle I live within is not something I am alone in… and that it goes on… and that it can go on for so long. (So… I’m not uniquely broken? But good grief, how can it go on?)

Grayness. I loathe the black-and-white perspective of monsters and good guys, but I am exhausted at the unravelling of who to trust and what to avoid and if it’s irresponsible to offer a warm smile to a stranger or inexcusable to ignore someone’s existence over the profile they fit (and the increasingly terrifying prevalence of sex trafficking and violence toward women).

I think of relationships and contribution.

I feel torn when I walk and think with myself, there’s a pull of wanting to bathe in my peaceful solitary sadness and wonder, but a fear at the risk of losing the thoughts and entire versions of me that might be put into words should I turn back and begin to write immediately so that you might come to read it.

When I walk, I feel like a new person every dozen steps or so. I wonder if this is because I live quite fully in the moment, so that I am becoming new with each passing second of delight, curiosity, joy, and awe… or if it is that I identify so intensely with my emotional experience that I am lost and reborn endlessly, like a droplet of water that becomes ocean spray before returning to the salty body exhaustively, for as long as the ocean survives.

I think of animals and nature.

I pass by a brown Australian shepherd who never fails to delight me. She runs back and forth along the fence, rarely making more than one playful challenging bark, and proceeds to tear branches from the thorny bush overgrowing the silver wire. Once freed, she’ll run back and forth with the branch. Is it a threat or an invitation to play, or is she just proud of this trick she can do?

I’m in the country where chickens roam wildly, pecking in the frosty grass that sparkles alongside the road. This is territory that should be reserved for a few farmer’s trucks and 1997 Subarus boasting 200,000 miles and more… and yet I see only an onslaught of Kias and Teslas, FedEx trucks and Amazon Prime vans.

I see squirrels too. I wonder if they ever get tired of the cold, of twitching and gathering, or of dodging the occasional cat or car. Today they are mostly brown, but one is gray and glorious. Three living, this round. And one creamed. Probably a Kia, I muse.

I think of solitude.

I find myself unexcited about exploring my voice and being honest and vulnerable outside of writing anymore. Things happen too quickly in spoken conversations. I don’t think to mistrust, I don’t think to question. I agree, I nod, I strive to comfort and delight with too little awareness of my safety and the wickedness strangers or friends could be capable of. (Not because I am worried for myself, but because I know my loved ones worry about me and it seems like my duty to be diligent in keeping myself safe for their peace of mind.) It makes me sick trying to prevent people from taking advantage of me… It makes me sick thinking that a great many people in this world would do so without feeling bad about it at all. I don’t want mistrust to become my default. For what? I am so tired already, why can’t I just be loving and have that be enough? (Not “poor me,” just … “ugh, this is so disappointing.”)

I think of warmth.

I know the moral of the story is that I must be my own home. That’s what Instagram and contemporary cinematography would tell me, anyway. But if I’m honest, I don’t believe that’s possible for me, and I’m not wholly convinced it even should be. I need a safe place to land now and again, somewhere outside of the confines of my own brain and being. I am cousin to mushrooms, I think, in that I require interconnectedness in invisible ways. A mother’s lap with fingers trailing delicately through my hair, a strong lover’s embrace reminding me that I am safe and the ground rests firmly as ever beneath my body right here and now, a sister’s giggle demonstrating the cosmic joke of equal mediocrity and novelty in a mildly sadistic subject, a sad text from a kind and lonely old man I know I will never stop missing one day much too near…

I think of what and if I will continue to be…

And for all the pondering, I always seem to conclude that kindness and a degree of sadness are the cost of life for me. Not in a melodramatic way. In a resigned sort of peaceful sigh. An inner grumpy old retriever huffs and plops down contentedly inside of my heart as if to say I am this way, this is the way that I am. That’s that.

I don’t know what a good person might be, I just know it makes my heart happy and my burden lighter if I allow myself to be kind. Even if that seems to be unsustainable and irresponsible, in alignment with my entire existence perhaps, but there’s nothing else that will allow me to make peace with my mind. Altruistic or weak and self-serving, I’m really not sure, but it’s all I care to give anymore.

Anyway, these are the musings of a sad girl who is still here, perhaps with more to share yet. (And for whatever it’s worth, whoever you are, I’m glad you’re here too.)