Voice Lessons

Melancholy

I have been on the verge of tears for the last few days. It's like something has shifted. It's that feeling you get when the distraction you've been able to achieve lifts, and the memory of tragedy comes flooding back. It's the feeling in the air just before the lightning strikes. I fear it will be the strike that kills me.

Except there is no tragedy. No life event to justify it. Just the sadness that accompanies one. It scares me because I don't know where it is coming from. I suffer from depression, mild bi-polar disorder, and anxiety. My fear stems from the fact that this feeling is different than those that usually accompany those disorders. I cannot just shrug my shoulders and classify it as being a part of that. It's a spiritual sadness. It's not only emotional, but a physical ache in my heart that I cannot put on the back shelf to examine later. It's ever present. It is a certain feeling of doom. It almost feels like I've lost someone or something important. It feels like a death.

Perhaps I'm in mourning over the loss of my true self. I've been withdrawing more and more into myself. I have very little interaction with people, and have even started to withdraw from my WDC community. I no longer communicate how I feel to anyone. Even myself. I long for the quiet days in my house where my family is gone and silence is my only companion. I don't have to pretend I'm the same as I used to be and put on a brave face. But the silence knows me too well, and is reflecting my apathy back to me. I no longer seem to care about anything except getting through the day. Even my writing is suffering.

Although I've felt and experienced this sorrow before, it has never lasted this long and it is always brought on by an event. I'm sure it is a reaction to my physical well being, (perhaps my TBI). I am broken, body and soul. I fear that while I can heal my body with medication, my soul is governed by another law, and I am at a loss to fix it.

Something has changed. Something has shifted.

I am broken.