Cinco de Mayo: Red Sticker Day

Believe me when I say that there was no part of me that wanted to depart from my bed today. It’s a beautiful Friday, which I can now fully attest to since going to my office and pulling open the blinds. However, yesterday was a doozy of a day in its entirety and it resulted in what I call a red sticker day. Getting out of bed today was like waking up to a hangover, not quite fully equipped to embrace the new day.

It appears that before I get on with my day I have to get all of this or as much of this as I can out. It’s been no secret that I have struggled with depression my entire adult life. I have always been plagued with insecurities and feelings of being, at times, inadequate. My mid-to-late 20s were marred by a series of extreme highs and lows. My BFF, Barry can certainly attest to the internal turmoil that I dealt with on a constant basis. Lovingly he’d say that for someone as smart as I am, I could be and do some really stupid things. Most of that had to do with my choices in men and in accepting anything that was handed to me when it came to them. Those insecurities manifested or were a manifestation of what I dealing with or avoiding internally.

I think that many of us are, to some degree broken. I can trace back to my childhood those pivotal moments that put you on a different path. Those moments where you come to the crossroads and you know that your continued journey has somehow changed. I was molested in my childhood by someone who worked for my grandparents at their bakery. I remember, or I imagined that I told my parents in a way where I didn’t want to make it a big deal. I was very young. I think maybe seven. I try not to think about it much but it has become my own dark passenger that has never left my side, subconsciously guiding me along my path. I liken it to a life previously filled with sunny days and all the days since being so often an assortment of overcast ones. Don’t get me wrong, there are days that the sun is out and the birds and melodically chirping, but it is noticeably different. All these years later I know that it’s different.

I miss my grandmother every day. There is a yearning, a constant dullness punctuated by moments of sheer despair. Her death marked the end of everything Jamaica was for me. I recoil at the thought of ever going back. It made me realize how the protected pieces of my childhood and life would never again be the same. As written in The Great Gatsby…

All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever…So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The occasional and welcomed peace that I feel while seated in a comfortable theater watching a great movie with family did bring with it its usual calm. I sat last night with my husband at the early showing of Captain America: Civil War and for those 2+ hours the whole world melted away. I allowed myself to relax and to become enamored with the movie. In the darkness, I can sometimes find glimpses of light.

As a whole, there is still so much noise in my life. Constant emails, too much information (even with the help of Unroll.me), too many distractions. I miss the peace of a more simple time. A time where I wasn’t so emotionally and financially crippled. I miss seeing the world through different eyes. Less is more. I now aim for a lot less. Less noise. Less clutter. Less complications. Less of the demons that wreak havoc with my life.