Degrees of Functionality...

I knew I was going to write this yesterday. The only problem was I couldn't write it, even if I'd wanted to.

Terms have become really important in the past few years. Terms like love, loneliness, sorrow...

I've discovered that, whereas most people say they look for closure, I'm not seeking closure. The only real closure comes with death, a path I turned from a couple of years ago. No. What I want is resolution. I want my problems, my heartache, my love, to become resolved. For me, only resolution allows progress.

Another term that's become important is normality; it changes daily. I don't deal with my life like a normal person and I figure I stopped that years ago. On the periphery of my memory, I seem to recall normality, when Rosa and I would fix dinner together and watch it in front of Emeril Live and we'd go to work and plan our weekends... normal. Now, each day is a fight against the voices in my head and the lethargy of depression.

I hear people talk about the degrees in a manic depressive. How bipolar you are... to which side you lean...

Not me. I refer to it as Degrees of Functionality. Some days I'm entirely functional and I can act like any normal person. I can buy my groceries, wash my dishes; I can even go to the mall alone and not have to sit in my car and drive. I'm very proud of myself on those days. But I know there's the other extreme, days like those of late, when I can't move or I'm afraid to move and I have to drink to calm down. Nights when I can't sleep or wake up in terror. Days when I can't think over the din of screaming voices.

Just so you know, the range is -10 to 10, the highest number expressing the most normal I feel.

Today I'm approaching 5, which is good because I still have a lot of housework to do when I get home that I didn't take care of last night because I was twitching on my sofa, smoking.

I hate that my life has been reduced to this. I hate that I cannot control myself, sometimes to perform the simplest task. I hate what depression and despair has done to me.

...

I just micronapped between sentences, sitting here at work. I stood upon a blue plain and a choir of angels sang to me. They sang the words, "I am the beast."

How appropriate!