pushing through the gloom

there is a unique kind of torture to the experience of having to complete a significant task at the same time one is dealing with overwhelming depression. i liken it to being told that you have to push a boulder for two miles up a steep incline on your knees. oh and you have to push it using your tongue.

such was my experience this weekend as i continued my preparations for this week's move while attempting to manage my emotions. actually, "manage" would be an overly generous term. it was more like doing my best not to be completely destroyed by them. there were moments that if a firearm were available, i would have held it up to my temple and squeezed the trigger. this was as much of a sign of the moments of pure insanity i was experiencing as it was the desperateness that i felt to escape the emotional and at times physical pain.

and the day after? well, my body is feeling the usual aches and pains that one experiences from a weekend of multiple trips of carrying boxes down two flights of stairs, loading them into a car, and up an additional flight or two at the new destination. and emotionally i am dealing with a hangover marked by a slight headache and some confusion sprinkled with a bit of disorientation as to what i can hope or want from life. of the two, i would rather just have the achy body. at least with that i have some reasonable expectation that the pain will subside and eventually go away. with the emotional bit i have no such confidence.

any brief scan of the recent entries of this blog will provide ample evidence that this is a difficult time in my life. this weekend i was confronted again with the demons of doubt and despair (my indefatigable twosome) and the sense that even the simplest of desires were beyond my grasp. in particular, the plans to have another meet up with sean (actually, for much of the weekend i was hoping for just a conversation let alone our moving forward in firming up our plans). and as the day wore on yesterday, i found myself questioning not only whether i still wanted to meet up but whether i still wanted to continue with the friendship at all.

was this particular relationship worth the mental anguish i was experiencing or was the mental anguish i was experiencing (both clinically and situationally produced) making the relationship more problematic? are those dynamics even mutually exclusive?

i wasn't able to reach a definitive conclusion as the day ended yesterday. and in the haze of a very early morning start, i'm still uncertain. i did express with this particular situation in an isolated message (my new term for "i.m." that occurs when there's no one present at the other end of an instant message) that i could not imagine not having sean in my life. at the same time, i'm not sure how much life i will have left if i keep having to endure what i experienced this past weekend.