The Abyss Was Deep

I've had a weirdly bad week.  A crisis of faith (not religious) one day, slogging through the Slough of Despond yesterday, then this morning I woke up as Eleanor Rigby.

Like I said, weirdly bad week.

My crisis of faith?  I don't think I have one shred of belief that, as humans, we are worth saving. Honestly.  If aliens came down and took a look...we'd be toast.  Though at the rate we're going, we'll nuke ourselves way before they get here.

I opened my laptop on...Thursday?...and all the despair and horror and crap that makes up our world these days just overwhelmed me.  Normally I skim the news, try to save my head and heart from the torture of details, but for some reason the headlines were graphic and succinct enough to give me more info on the stories than I wanted.

Who decided it was okay to bring the most deadly disease on the planet to our shores? How many women have to be murdered, abused, subjugated and treated like chattel before we say fucking enough already because--believe it or not peeps--men are not superior beings.  And what kind of parent forgets their baby is in the back seat of a car and goes off to work?  Why is it that every day--every single day--some person goes nuts and kills his entire family.  Take yourselves out instead, you crazy bastards, leave the innocent alone. How many wars can we fight?  How many ways are there to kill the environment, living creatures, people?

My crisis of faith dropped me headfirst into the Slough.  I wallowed. I tried to crawl out but kept sliding back down the slippery slope.  The hopelessness was just plain daunting. I stayed off the internet, didn't turn on the television.  I walked the dogs for miles; spent long hours in silence with just them, my books...and whiskey.  By last night I'd gotten a grip...maybe seeing life through whiskey fumes helped in that endeavor.  Whatever. When I went to bed, I felt marginally better.

Then I dreamed.  About love and sex and bone-crushing hugs and sharing a life.  It was so vivid and wonderful that when I woke up this morning, I forgot for a second--just a tiny little second--that it wasn't real.  My man is gone.  There is no love, no sharing, no sex. I'm just a different bloody version of Eleanor Rigby.  Without the Beatles to sing my song.

I'm out of the Slough now, and though I'm still shaking the mud off my boots, the turmoil in my mind has eased.  I kept my head in the moment today as the boys and I walked through the VA complex, the Sumac and Maple trees turning such incredibly beautiful colors, I couldn't help but smile.

And I learned something.  Smiling is like good whiskey...minus the burn.