changes
It’s happened again. Change.
I have felt it these last few weeks. Just a glimmer here and there. A hint of chill in the morning air. A heaviness at sunset when the clouds stretch endlessly across the sky.
It’s definite but it is not tangible - the moment when things change. It’s only afterward when you stop to notice, and then wonder: when? where?
I felt it tonight, the first rain in many months. The lighting and thunder - so rare to accompany any storm in Southern California - the sun seems brighter as it sets over the ocean. When the sky is pink and purple and yellow and blue like that, it reminds me of things I haven’t thought of in a long time. And the things I felt then, that I haven’t felt in a long time.
Tonight I remembered what I felt like when I was young, and I lived alone, and then I didn’t. It was the calm, I realize now, the calm before a storm and I was at sea. I remember feeling happy, through a fog of sadness. Day after day. Fog is explained as a cloud that settles on the ground. You would never think of a cloud looking like that up close. That is how depression was for me. Up close and slowly wrapping itself around me. I knew it was there and I felt it pulling close, but I never really knew exactly what it was.
Tuna helper. I remember tuna helper, and overflowing garbage cans and a one bedroom apartment, with two queen beds side by side. A roommate, that later became my best friend. I worked days and she worked nights; when we were home at the same time one of us would be asleep. The other was creeping through the apartment getting ready for work or for bed.
Everything but my clothes and my bed was in the garage. In a box. I had a job and I went to school and I had a boyfriend and I had an apartment and a roommate and I had friends.
And I was alone.
Adrift. At sea.
Alone.
I spent a lot of time looking wistfully into the sunset. Watching, waiting. I kept waiting for the answers to reach out to me. I wanted to feel as bright and as beautiful as the sun did at sunset. When the sky was orange and golden and then slowly pink, and yellow, and blue and purple.
It’s here again. The calm before the storm. I didn’t know what storm was brewing then. The cruel clarity of hindsight. When it’s too late and there’s nothing you can do and all you have left is the pieces. The pieces you’ve spent every day since trying to pick up and convincing yourself that those days and that time is over. Gone.
I don’t know what it is now. I don’t know if I feel the way I felt then, or if I just remember the feeling like it was here again. But I can feel a subtle shifting around me. I’m catching glimpses of it again. One day I’ll wake up and it will be winter again, and the days will be short and the weather will be cold, and empty.
