Thursday, February 14, 2008

Every Breath You Take

I pass a billboard on my way to work most days that has the statistics listed for the number of suicides, homicides, and DUI-related deaths for last year in the state of Minnesota. The number of suicides is almost twice that of the other deaths combined. The tagline of the billboard is "depression kills."

Today was a perfectly fine day in my life. But I'm sitting here at the computer, aware that I'm just concentrating on every breath, willing myself not to cry, and wondering at what I'm doing. I'm overtired, I know. I'm upset that on Valentine's Day I left the house at 7:00 am and didn't get home until 9:30 pm and now all I want to do is go to bed, but I want to spend time with my fiance and I want this neverending cycle of constant work to stop. My throat is closing up. My stomach is in knots.

I check the news and see that there has been another shooting at another college and more students are dead. I hear another story about another couple who can't even pay their bills on time having a child. I panic when I think about what will happen in another four months and insead of having three jobs I have none. I panic about the alarm going off nine hours from now. How can I get through another day like this?

Most days I am fine. Absolutely fine. I go through life without a hitch. But today, right now, I feel all of this inside and I wonder about that billboard. I wonder if I had to live with this day after day if I could take it. I hope that when I wake in the morning, all of this anxiety disappears and I can be myself again.

P.S.
Dear Blogger,

Seriously, if you don't fix the fucking spell check function I may be forced to hurl my computer out the window. And you don't want to be responsible for that, do you?

1 comment:

  1. Dearest NGS,

    I hope you are doing ok today. i hope your stomach has de-knotted itself.

    I know that feeling all to well myself. Why is it my stomach that feels the brunt of stress, I wonder... Why not, say, my left pinky? A Chinese herbalist would have a straightforward answer, I'm sure.

    on a much lighter note, if you write in firefox, it will check your spelling for you. A lil' red line will appear under the word, just like in a Word document. Hope that helps somewhat.

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