Crash

Two nights ago I crashed.

I don't know how else to describe it.  I'm broken, numb, a shell of a person.  I just want to be human again.  I'm so unbelievably depressed.  I don't know that I've ever felt this way.  I put on a smile.  I go to work.  I take care of my kids, fold laundry, send polite messages, but I'm empty inside.

I just want to feel something and at the same time I want to feel nothing.

Recent events have taught me how unbelievably precious the time we have with each other is, and knowing this I can't help but feel a need to be with my kids and to cherish every second that they are with me because I never really know if or when that will end.  But the exhaustion of day to day life and my frustration of being stuck between being happy about being successful enough to provide for my family and being disappointed by the way certain aspects of my life overtakes me and all I want to do is sleep.  I rest and rest but I can't seem to sleep and it's taking its toll on me.

I haven't slept - really slept - in months.  My eyes are closed and my body is unresponsive but my brain never shuts off and I never find peace.

I feel incredibly humbled by all that I've been given in life and I can't explain why it's been given to me.  If I knew, then I would maybe feel entitled or at least like I've earned it but I feel neither.  I am neither.  I just simply have a knack for being at the right place in the right time.  Everything in my life so far has been a chain of events kicked off by pure happenstance and the way things have come together leaves me in awe.  I am not supposed to be here.  I say that not to elevate myself but instead in recognition of the way my life could be, and in some ways, the way I feel it should be.  The inequities in this world are sometimes more than I can bear and I know this is strange because I'm not complaining about how other people have it better than me or how some people get to the top by schmoozing their way.  I'm having a friggin existential conflict because I feel that my life is great and that I don't deserve it.  I see people standing on the roadside, holding signs to beg for food for their meals and wonder, "Why isn't that me?"  I read stories of children who die from malnurishment not far from where I live and I ask myself, "Why do I get the luxury of having an excess of food to the point that I can afford to use it to medicate myself, to the point that I can stuff myself so full it hurts, while these children who did absolutely nothing to deserve the destitute poverty under which they are living don't just miss a meal or two but die, die, because they don't have it?"

So then I look at my chicken sandwich that I don't physically want because I'm not actually hungry, and I feel an obligation to eat it.  It's like my grandma always said, "There are starving children in Africa..."  Hell.  There are starving children in Appalachia.  And even though I know that my eating that excess of food is going to do no one any good, I eat it.  My conscious mind says that it'd do me more good if I took that to a starving person and let them eat it but my subconscious mind tells me to clean my plate like a good little girl.

Why can I see a friend of mine, a wonderful, inspirational woman, who is part of an amazing family who goes out of their way to help those in need even when it means that they themselves go without, telling me about how she can afford to buy only fruit for her children at Christmas while my cart is full of frivolous things?

I've never been a religious person so I can't say that my evangelical missions of kindness ever touched someone or that I have suffered so much to bear my reward.  I believe there is a higher power but I don't worship that higher power.  I don't go to church.  I avoid conversations about religion and I look at my feet when people pray.

I wasn't born into a wealthy family and I am not exceptionally talented academically or otherwise.  I have no particular trade or skill to offer.  No connections to speak of.

I should be proud of what I've accomplished, but I'm not.  I should be thankful to have what I have and to not have to struggle, but I'm not.  I'm depressed because I have and others don't and I just want everyone to have what they need.  Maybe not an excess, but I believe that everyone deserves the basic human necessities and I'm so downtrodden by the amount of need in this life that I can't seem to dig myself out of the fire to be able to see past the smoke.