Appearing Unbothered When You May Be Dead Inside

It has been weeks since my last post and that was not intentional. I have several posts sitting in draft status, waiting to share the depths and shallowness of my inner thoughts.

But like so many things in my life, I get overwhelmed by my own goals and dreams. Then sprinkle that with some personal drama and depression and I easily lose focus. However, it is my current dance with depression that is motivating me to blog today.

There is something about being a black woman in the world (office included) that makes you feel the need to put on any face that can’t be read as weak. Usually, many see the face of what some may deem as a bitch. But my favorite is the one that is hard to read. You can’t tell what I am thinking or feeling behind my expression and behind that face is my safe space.

After a long day of maintaining this face while on the inside I was breaking down, I am forced to put it back on despite a mini break.

I sit on the couch, alone, where the only sense of light is a lamp I am too lazy to turn off and the sound of the a/c drowns out the soft noise of my husband’s snores. But even in the near darkness and loneliness, I can’t take this mask off.

While sleep may have found him, she is somewhere beyond my current comprehension. Probably being smothered by the thoughts of my current marital and personal struggles. See I can’t go to sleep because she doesn’t want to fight hard enough to save me or herself. So I sit here typing while my thoughts turn into a poison paralyzing my body, preventing me from getting up and going to bed. A bed that tells me I am unwelcome despite the vacancy sign.

I’ve spent most of my adult life consciously and unconsciously training for this persona of unbotheredness. While depression has consumed me at times to the point of almost no return, I never let anyone see it who I didn’t want to see. My soul may have been dying, but on the outside no one knew.

I have no intention of opening myself up to strangers……well beyond the the anonymity of this blog. Or suddenly becoming a healthy, well-functioning adult, though my friends may argue my lacking in that department makes me a good story teller. But I am working on myself everyday. Baby steps.

That first step is finishing a blog post before the poison works its way down to my fingers. Because writing (blogging) is important to me. When I was young writing and reading were like my only friends. My husband used to tell me he feel in love with my words and that I was surgical with them. Though now it seems as though my precision is more of a negative in his eyes than a romantic notion these days, but that is a battle for another day.

It is almost time for bed, maybe a sleeping pill will help free sleep from its bondage. Guess we will soon find out 😉