Closure

Click to embiggen and read. Promethea
taught me an awful lot.
It was one year ago this week that the world ended.

You probably didn't notice.

It wasn't a Death Star versus Alderaan kind of ending but it was terrifying and irrevocable.

I had been asleep, far too comfortable. Now I was adrift for the first time in my life, cut loose from the anchor I'd clung to for 22 years. It was the scariest feeling ever and I had no idea what to do. All the emotions running around loose inside me roiled and boiled into desperate thoughts. Everything was on the line. I felt so awful that despair was a parking lot somewhere on the dark side of the moon compared to where I was.

The details are boring and pedestrian. Suffice to say that when my world ended, I retreated so far inside myself that I couldn't see any way out.

I stopped exercising, my eating habits became crap and erratic. I didn't sleep and when I did, I didn't sleep well. The weight I put on made me more miserable. (So much so that it's only now that I can start to shed it a little at a time.) I couldn't write. I couldn't draw. Nothing was good. TV was awful. Music sucked. Movies sucked. Everything was bleak. My whole life was over.

Of course everything wasn't over. The world wasn't really ended. Things had simply changed. My ability to see clearly had been fogged over and even though intellectually I knew it wasn't all bad, my emotions had me wrapped up tight. There were plans to be made, strategies to devise if I was going to get through it. But man, those emotions were powerful. I had to adapt.

And no lie, it wasn't easy. I was frightened beyond belief but I would not be beaten. I had to prove I was exactly what I'd always presented myself to be: clever, smart, strong. Doubt is a powerful thing and self-doubt doubly so. It gnaws at you. It has teeth. Sharp teeth slick with the blood of dreams and desires. Teeth that bite with deceptive force and hang on.

After what was an interminable time where I sank even lower, I got some help, some wonderful help and caught a lucky break. (You know who you are and you know that I'm grateful. I wouldn't be here without you.)

Everything wasn't over, despite appearances. In the end, what happened last year wasn't the best nor the worst thing ever. It was simply a thing that happened that caused me to evolve. There's no ill will or bad feelings about what happened. I sometimes miss camaraderie and friendships, but that's life. I've moved on.

So the world ended and you didn't notice. The thing is, the world ends every day somewhere for someone. When it's someone you know, try to notice, then reach out and help them. Even if they're not asking you to, you just being there will be a help.

Here - now - removed by a calendar year from the event that changed my world forever, I am revitalized and moving forward. The wound is healed but the scar will stay as a reminder.

I have had my eyes opened. I will never doze off like that again.

I will remain awake.