Today is a beautiful winter day, covered in a kind of redemptive blanket of snow. School has been out for two days and the forecast is calling for yet another round this evening.
I woke up to four year old snuggles and oatmeal for breakfast. The front porch is littered with snowsuits and mittens and hats and scarves and boots from children running to and from their snowy playground. And let's be honest, we all reached our screen quota for the year sometime around mid-afternoon yesterday. It's all a little bit sweet and romantic and what, when I was younger, I somehow imagined my life to be, which is why none of what I am about to share makes any sense at all.
Because in the midst of it all, the hot chocolate and kisses and scattered mittens, I am often terrified. Terrified of the quiet. Terrified of the noise in my head. Terrified of being forced to stop the activity of daily life long enough to acknowledge my emptiness, my flaws, and my genetically predisposed lack of serotonin. Over the past three months, terror has sunk its claws into me and won't let go.
I've had fleeting bouts of this kind of paralyzing fear all of my life. When it descends, it envelopes me entirely, stealing joy and leaving a drowning sense of helplessness in its place. It's a lonely place because no one can reach me there, no matter how much I awkwardly try to reach out and no matter how much others try reaching back.
Even in my lowest moments, it would probably shock most people to know the depths of my internal struggle. Because I fight against it like crazy. And I've learned to become an expert at holding it all together. I work harder. I run faster. I take on more and more. And beat myself up for not doing enough, for not being enough. For my husband, for my kids, for my students, for my friends. I stay busy to crowd out the voice that repeats the mantra You will never be enough.
And then there's a snow day. Or two. Or three. And the world stops and so do I because I have no other choice. In these moments of quiet, terrifying to me as they are, I realize that there is redemption in days like these. I can take a deep breath and allow myself to exhale. To read. To reflect. To be and not do. In my lucid moments, when I allow myself to stop and breath, the fog clears and I see myself and the world as it is, not through the lens of fear. If only for a moment.
Though I know that these times of fear will continue to come and go throughout my life, they don't last forever. I also know that though while I feel alone and isolated in times like these, I am certainly not. And to those who also walk this path silently and anonymously, whoever you are, wherever you are, I say the snow will melt and the sun will shine, even if some days it feels as if it never will again. It always does.
