I’ve been eerily calm about everything lately.  I haven’t taken the Clonazepam in a week—ran out—yet I’ve been okay.  A few panic attacks, some low-grade anxiety manifesting itself as strained back and leg muscles, several moments of deep bereavement, but I’m overall peaceful.

That is, in the face of the deaths seemingly piling up around me lately, I’m okay.

In fact, my major stressor has become the fear that my late sense of peace will end.  Because if this ends, then I didn’t learn anything new.  And I’ll struggle to control myself—again.  Then, I’ll know the peace was really shock from Sang’s death.  Then, this is just another turn of the chemical tides.  It’s always—

I’m catastrophizing.  Realistically, it’s more likely the peace I feel is due to the overall peaceful environment I’ve constructed around me.  I have several inspiring relationships in my life.  I have a steady income and health insurance.  I have an able body and a highly capable mind.  True, I recently lost one of my best friends to what boils down to the limitations of science.  Just today I held back tears as I told a Sang story.  Yet, that I was able to exercise that much control surprises me.  My voice only broke a few times, and I had the foresight to lower my gaze to hide the rising tide hazing my vision.  It was a small step but a step forward nonetheless.

Publishing this post tonight is the biggest step of all, actually.  The worst thing a depressive can do is isolate.  So, I’m doing what anybody who’s had effective therapy treatment does: communicating.  Every word hurts, and every sentence feels like a small miracle I alone labored to create.  Even as I write these words, I’m wondering if I’ll have the courage to press the “Publish” button to my right.  If I do, it’ll be a big step out of grief and depression.  If I publish again tomorrow, I’ll have started myself on the long journey back to full mental and physical health.  Writing, my shameless monster, washes me of the guilt and self-disgust that’s too long kept my skin from breathing.  Publishing adds meaning to an otherwise masturbatory skill.

So, in a sense, I give myself meaning by publishing.

I’m sorry.  I’m either extremely focused or disturbingly absent-minded.  This post seems to drift between the two states.  I irresponsibly allowed the Clonazepam to run out in between psychiatric visits.  Though I did have the job of finding a new psychiatrist during that interim, I should have made the matter a higher priority than I did.  I—I’m whipping myself.

Not a new problem.  I know.

I’m trying to scream on paper, but I’m not talented enough to know how to do it.  So too simply put, nothing feels urgent anymore.  Yet, I’m full of all this quiet, distant tension.  Not quite dissociation, I’m compelled to enjoy it.  But I just don’t trust it to be good.  There’s an anxiety whispering from there.  It’s creeping up my throat, and I want to let it out.  If I let it out, maybe I’ll be able to take a deep enough breath.  I can stop this yawning.  I’m always so exhausted, lately.

I just have to press “Publish.”