9.6
I’m still sick. In body, mind…both? The motivation to wake up every day and go about this life I’ve created is waving.
Sylvia Plath: “I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.”
We all have a “dark thing” inside of us. For me, it is always present. This void of meaninglessness. It sometimes opens up and swallows me whole. It’s not just a shadow–it’s an inherent part of my identity, this chasm of emptiness. Like a sleeping baby that’s inconsolable upon waking, its cries echo through my mind, pulling me into its depths. The only way to make peace with it is to live authentically, but some days, I wonder if even that’s enough.
I wake up to an onslaught of appointments, each hour more frenzied than the last, filled with frazzled, tired, snappy people. We’re all spinning in this exhausting, never-ending cycle. My house is a disaster, a reflection of my inner state I suppose. Pile of things, unfinished tasks, messes that few would be able to accept–but here I sit, nuzzled into it all. How does one continue in a play that has run its course?
There’s always this duality, as Plath said: “It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative–whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.”
I always feel this duality of life starkly–the positive and the negative. The shift between the two can sometimes be jarring. Because they are both ever-present inside of me. I try to swim in the joyous end of the pool, but sometimes the current is too strong and I get pulled ever farther into the despairing end of the pool. I fight against the current, but it’s futile, and just makes the despair more exhausting.
There are moments when the current drags me under. I know I can’t fight the current forever. I know I have to flow where the current takes me. But in those moments when I’m losing strength, drowning seems like the kindest outcome.
This weariness. How do I fix it? Can it be fixed?
Days like this, I wonder–what is the point of it all? Why do I stay here, trapped in this body that hates me, in this mind that fights me at every turn? How do I continue living as the current pulls me deeper, and the darkness stirs, waiting to swallow me again?