When the mind wanders, it goes back to the night

I remember the cold, dark days of winter that have recently passed my way. Nights when I did not think the tears would ever stop and the pain was almost pushing to the jumping point. When the feelings churning inside me were things I could never explain, not to him, not to myself. I felt no purpose in living – why did anyone love me, HOW could anyone love such an immoral, selfish, wishy-washy, cranky bitch? I honestly did not feel that I fulfilled any “role” in this world and wanted nothing more than to be out of it.

I do not think that anyone, save perhaps Jen or Rissa, really knew how unhappy I was. And even they did not know how many times I came so close to ending it. Even they did not know the infinite depths of my blackness. It is so hard to share depression – people who are not depressed do not understand it and wonder why you simply cannot “snap out of it” or “smile”. And people with it understand it too well and it is nearly impossible to present your own separate story to them.

But when the days just build upon the days and the setting sun is no longer beautiful, but merely a marker of your wasted day, something must change. You either break or you bend, change or die. One of my favorite quotes – “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” I obviously had something that I wanted to live for, otherwise I would not have survived. For me, though, change was necessary. It came along in the form of…something that, even now, I cannot describe or define or even really understand.

All I know is that I made the choice to be happy – “Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.” I do not know how or why I made that choice. Had I had enough of the black nights? Do I really and truly have some purpose for being in this world? Am I simply too stubborn, deep down, in the untapped depths of the soul, to give up? I do not know and these are questions that I do not think that I will have answered, either by me or by others.