Grinding

Membrane by Finijo

Tonight I am pondering a lifetime spent fighting to survive and always coming up just a little bit short. I will request some antidepressants and antianxiety medication from my doctor next week, to see if it can help lift the veil. Beyond tired, I am weary.The clarity of vision to create is now lost to a constant fog. No writing, no drawing - just work, home, chores, errands, and taking care of other people. Using Roku like crack, and binging one show after another, just to keep from having to sleep a dreamless sleep or think about all that feels like it is crushing me. Waiting to lay down until I am literally staggering to bed in exhaustion, prevents me from being kept awake by thoughts of what cannot be changed before I drift off.  Hope and joy now replaced by dread and regret. We all carry our own burdens, but some of us carry the burden of others, and eventually it y to lean on, and nobody to help. One by one, possibilites are ground away, leaving a layer of dust over what little is left.

New Year 2017

Trish and Darin Glass Half Empty

It is a new year and I am slogging through it already. Mom went into the hospital and had surgery on December 20th, and the illness I had been fighting off took me over for the next two weeks. The vacation days that I took well in advance of the end of the year, with the express though to spend them doing fun things and not thinking about the dread I am feeling from work and from the impending inauguration of president-elect Baby Tyrant never happened. I was too ill to attend the parties I was invited to and became a slave to Mucinex, steroids, antibiotics, Nyquil and a neti pot.  I did manage to get to the Degas exhibit at the MFAH and it was transcendent. More than 200 pieces of art including drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs. It was an incredible history lesson and journey through the life of an incredibly talented artist. I am going to strive this year to see as much art as I can, since I don't seem to be capable of creating it at the moment. I am also setting the bar very low for my goals this year. Survival is my watchword, emotionally, professionally, and physically. If I manage to survive, then goals met. If anything happens beyond survival, then there may be cause for celebration. 

I face the new year, not with a renewed sense of purpose or having replenished my reserves, but in a depressed and depleted state. I don't want to go back to work. I don't have the energy to help anyone, so I will go through the motions and hope that the law of averages will make everything appear to be running as it should, not good, not bad, but middling. Not sunshine or rain, nothing to inspire an emotional lift or fall, just more of the grey nothingness. 

Fuck 2016 and all the promise that was lost, and fuck 2017, too. I know what's coming and it is going to be a bitch of a year.