The Mountaintop & the Year I Missed

The Mountaintop & the Year I Missed 

 “Don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library, Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.” 

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I missed out on a year of life.
At least.
Well, sort of.
Maybe more.

I was alive, but dead inside.
I wasn't okay.
I tried to be okay.
I couldn't.
I tried, though.

There are things I wanted to do and couldn't.
There are things I missed, and didn't want to.
There are things I was supposed to be doing and couldn't bring myself to do them.

Glued to my bed.
Crippled with enormous anxiety.
Heavy with a downcast spirit.
Washing away in tides of tears.
Lost in my mind.
So lost in the swirling sadness.
Why was I even alive?

I walked out the door of work for the summer in tears.
My daily routine was about to change for 10 weeks because I'm a teacher, and we have summers off.
No work.
No work friends.
No bells.
No students.
Just me, alone with my thoughts.

I can't do this.
I ran away to the mountains hoping they would cure me.
I ran away to find someone hoping they would cure me.
I ran to people who couldn't save me.
I tried to save myself.
I prayed to God hoping he would do something.
I drowned myself in tears hoping I could cry it out.
I ran and ran and ran hoping I could run it off.

If there is an end, I'll finish.
If there is a cure, I'll find it.
If there is healing, I'll heal.

Nothing worked.

If sadness was a flood, I was long drowned.
If depression was real, I'd finally realized it.
If I was going to make it to the other side, where was it?

Was it over the mountains of Breckenridge I was climbing?
Was it over the mountains of RMNP I hiked the same week?
Was it a year, five years, ten years down the road?
What was wrong with me?
Where was my happy?
Where was I?
Who was I?

"Time will heal your wounds:" what a sick, sardonic cliche.
Time is a bitch.
Ok, so maybe she isn't female.
Maybe time is a shitty ass man.
A shitty ass human.
Or like a friend who wasn't on my side.
Or a pet that doesn't follow commands.
No, time, for me, was just another noun with no positive connotations, analogies, metaphors, or similes.

So I rode it out.
Rode it out thinking and trying everything except professional help.
Professional: that sounded so out of place and too formal.
Too formal for my free-spirited soul.
Help: strong women don't ask for help.
I don't need help, I retorted.
But I had a wounded soul.
And band-aids don't fix bullet holes.
My vision and imagination were too myopic to see what I needed.

I couldn't see the end, my way out.
If I could only have seen it, would that have mattered?
I didn't know someone would eventually help me.
If I'd only had someone step in sooner. Intervene. Could that have changed anything?

Depression.

Round one: I never saw any of it coming. I didn't even know what I was going through. It was mostly just eternal sadness. 24 hours each day and night.

Round two: I saw it come on like a slow fade-out of an already lengthy and melodramatic 80s song at a high school school dance.

Round three: Wasn't supposed to happen but it did. You can't control horrible, conniving people who take your job from you.

Round four: See "all of the above." Then, add "I've got this." Yeah, right.

Round five: I knew it was coming, but didn't believe it. I laughed it off conceitedly. I told myself I'd be okay: I made it past rounds one through four, after all.

I'm done swinging.
I don't have to swing anymore.
I'm done fighting my demons.
I'm not saying I don't have bad days.
I do.
I'm not saying my demons still don't haunt me.
They do.
But they're not a part of where I am now.

And I didn't save myself.
A million little things saved me each time around.

A nudge saved me.
A friend saved me.
Tough love saved me.
Love saved me.
My faith saved me.
The mountains saved me.
Counseling saved me.
Running saved me.
A 140.6 mile race saved me.
A renewed friendship saved me.
Sleep saved me.
Time saved me.
You saved me.

It wasn't one thing.
It wasn't one person, even though I wanted it to be that easy.
It never is.
But it gets better. That is not a cliche.

That mountaintop?
It's out there.
It's a haul.
Tiring.
Grueling.
You might miss a year of your life training for it or climbing up it, a year you wanted to spend doing other things.
You might have to turn around.

But you'll climb it, and sometimes more than once.

And damn, it's worth the view.

How do I know?
I'm finally there.