Expensive Gifts

I was depressed yesterday and broke someone's heart.  I worked and did not laugh, and when it was time to log off, I sat with my sister for the evening until my eyelids were so heavy I could not keep them opened.  I thought a lot about what other people were doing, one person in particular, and about the cruel games we play with each other.
It's all sort of ridiuculous and lonely, but we continue down this path called love, don't we?  I understand that a lot of people don't go through this, that a lot of people are just fine pretty much all the time, and that a lot of people are happy and don't worry about half the shit that goes through my head. 
But I know that this can turn into a positive thing, that all this heartache and miscommunication and turmoil and whatever else I could call it will sooner or later be over with, and that something very beautiful, perhaps poignant and heartbreaking, can come from it.  I picked up a book about creativity, a workbook, last night but I was too tired to read more than a couple of pages, and way too tired to start on an exercise.  I fell fast asleep with the book in my hand and the pen somewhere under the covers.  I hope I don't have ink stains on my sheets - they were an expensive gift from someone that can't afford expensive gifts.  I makes me think about the price we pay for certain things.  I just hope it's worth it.

To tell you the truth...

I haven't been writing.  I haven't been doing much of anything, besides drinking and feeling sorry and pathetic and thinking dangerous thoughts that I try to avoid, thoughts like suicide by sleeping pills, that great long sleep, and then chasing down projects when I've not even completed ones that I've been working on for years, such as this book, and giving up on so many things all together.  I want to be hopeful, of course.  I've been taking my pills, I've been trying to watch my drinking, I've been hoping to black out less.  I've been trying to get my mind in a place that is not so dark, so desperate, but it's been a challenge.  A daily struggle.  And I wonder if I'm just one of those people.  One of those that will always struggle, with everything, and a person that will never quite make it to happiness.  Of course I don't want to be that way.  Who does?
It's not like I'm unhappy all the time.  It's not like I don't have friends that I enjoy going out with, and it's not like I don't laugh.  It's that I'm haunted, as Q said, by something that I've yet to understand.
I've realized that I've fucked it up.  I threw away a lot of things that I didn't mean to throw away, and the only thing I can be thankful for is that I didn't burn any bridges.
So I've been reading, detoxing, sleeping, stretching.  Walking miles and zoning out.  Shedding skins, shedding pounds, picking at my haggard fingernails.  Deciding what's right and what's wrong and picking up the pieces.  I am forever picking up pieces.
I haven't written because I fear what's inside me.  Or what's not inside me.  I gave up on the dream of writing.  I'll admit it.  I had to give it up; I don't have the stamina to keep moving forward.  I would still love it, that corner university office packed with books and sweet, early morning light.  But I don't think that's in the cards for me.  I don't think I'll ever get there.  Instead, I'm doing another thing I love, selling vintage clothes.  I'm focusing on something new to take away from the heartache and the pain.
I've been trying to explain it to Q but he doesn't trust me.  I can understand why.  He is unwilling to budge and I know that I am stuck here, at least until my troubled mind is healed.
I was thinking the other day about what would have happened to me if this was another time, and another place.  I wouldn't be in the free world, that's for sure.  They would lock me up again, make me stay somewhere drafty, where I could pad around all day and read the same cheap novels over and over again.  That wouldn't last long.  It couldn't.  I wouldn't let them kill me slowly, when I could just do it myself.
The other night, well, weeks ago, I sat at a bar drunk from binge drinking shitty beer all night.  I was trying to explain to M that I wasn't going to make it to 30, and I was crying but trying to pretend like I wasn't crying.  M couldn't understand why I'd think that, how I could let myself think that, as if I had a choice.  Explaining depression is impossible, at least for me, and it especially was that night.
I always thought I could write myself right, but it looks like I'll need several years of therapy and hospitalizations before I can even consider being "right".  No wonder Q is afraid.  How can I make him not afraid?  How can I remind him of our sleepy mornings, of that sweet and supple bond between two people that know each other well, of a love that seemed so unbreakable?
Isn't life supposed to be one great story?  Filled with climaxes and changes of heart and long periods of lull, where time stretches and skips seemingly at the same time?
Discovery and recovery.  I need you.