Balance

Dear Ellen

I am a tightrope walker. Behind me on this thin wire is everything I know about you, me and the world in general. Everything familiar and comforting pulls me back, but I can't turn around because the wire is shaking and my balance precarious. There's no net below me, just an abyss of loss, self pity, depression and fear which is constantly pulling at me. Each day is a fight to keep my balance, to avoid the
fall, each evening I find myself hanging on by this thin thread of a wire with just my fingers. Ahead of me is a platform of safety. It might as well be a mile away.
I know, it sounds so drama, but this is what my mind dreams of at night. I used to dream of flying, wonderful and light and free, now I dream of high wire acts.

It's been two months now. It's a lifetime which just happened yesterday in terms of time endured. My protective fog has lifted, leaving me with a clear mind to indulge in sharp images and unexpected emotions. If I falter on my thin wire, the fall is hard. I do fall, often, and sometimes the spiral downward is a relief, like breathing in while drowning to quicken the process. Maybe it's not so bad, I think, to stay here awhile, blocking the world out.

But then, your voice in my head. Clearly annoyed. You rarely indulged in self-pity and didn't tolerate it much in me. So we talk, well really, I talk and you listen. I sit in the bathtub with a glass of wine and the cat lying nearby as a witness. I talk until the glass is empty and the water cold, the cat now bored. I talk until I feel better, until I figure out a way to climb back up on the wire. I laugh at myself, how utterly absurd I am to think I could get away with self indulgence when you are listening.

Each day I find a new way to see things differently, to cope, to understand this grief.
I am a tightrope walker and the platform is only a mile away.

love,
cathy