I've Looked at Life From Both Sides Now

"Great, how are you?"

How easily those words trickle out in an automated response to the tens or hundreds of people who I cross paths with daily and who utter the simple question:

"How are you?"

"Happy Monday, how are you?"

"How was your weekend?"

Good, yours?

Except inside there is something clawing to get out that screams in a pitch that obviously cannot be heard,

"THIS IS HELL AND IT WAS HELL AND IT ALL WAS, ACTUALLY, FUCKING HELL."

I tone down the profanities and say,

"Dandy sure, how was yours?"

But yet, with every inquiry, every innocent, blase question asked more of obligation than actual interest, the response remains the same:

"Oh you know, the usual. You?"

Nobody in this club really ever responds with honesty.

Unless we are talking to the other figuratively and eternally black-shrouded members of the club who all try to carry on our daily lives as to not inconvenience anyone with our grief.

"What did you do this weekend?" is met with, "Oh, watched a movie, relaxed," instead of, "Wailed on the floor when it hit me that he would not be coming through the door after soccer practice and we wouldn't order sushi because we were both too tired to cook while also saying we should probably budget better and eat less takeout."

That's not been happening - kudos to Doordash.

Nobody replies with that.

Unless you're talking to your Soulless Sisters.

I sometimes blame the medications for how mechanical I have been.

Other times I blame dissociation and how I throw myself into work to try and keep my brain so busy that it does not have time to break down.

If something keeps moving at an unnecessary speed it will take longer for it to stop.

To Crash.

Just keep going.

Fuel it with Zoloft and see if it will run until it physically cannot anymore and just...

Stops.

Things moved so flawlessly with us.

A perfectly functioning machine; a beautiful tragedy in the end, really.

I have seen both sides of it all.

Black and white.

Never in the middle.

I think most of my life has always been that way.

16 weeks and one day.

Those are 16 weeks and one day more than I thought I could survive without you.

I do not know how the body and mind do but they have.

Busybusybusy until it breaks down.

I have been told by one of my Soulless Sisters that my break is coming, it just has not come yet.

But there have been many times I have thought I would break.

But yet I have not.

So I keep moving and going and breathing and existing.

How is tonight?

"Great. How is yours?"