Welcome back and it’s been a long month. The last comms. and review was last August. So maybe the month started then, just before a new Masters was started. Or maybe it started last May, when the last Masters ended prematurely. Or maybe it started on 27.8.22, the date my dad had a stroke that stripped him of dignity and ability to be a present and participating, protesting and political, fighting and functioning, (almost) ever-present and loving, and helpfully (at least sometimes-to-mostly) opinionated force in the world. That’s the date that my Ma’s heart broke too.

The long month might have started last week when my new Masters funding was withheld, putting the whole new attempt into question risks of unpayable debts. It might have started before that, in the midpoint of 2022 when a judge ruled on my child’s adoption. It could have started earlier, somewhere back in 2020, when a marriage reached irreparable rough points, or in 2019 when world travels ended early and I came home to a city of anger and bitterness and burnt bridges. It could have been six months of living in a building site regretting my sand-scratched corneas and decision making. Maybe it was none of the above.   

Maybe it started in 2015 when I lost use of legs and speech for some months due to running full-throttle too long. Or maybe, it was 2018, the last time I saw, felt and had ‘stable’. That’s when a house and good job was all sold for a shot of a new type of forward and future.

In the bad times I say that’s the start. The loss of ‘stable’ back in 2018. In the good times it’s just part of the tapestry. When in bad moods it’s where I place blame, blasting my reckless naivety. When in better, it’s a part of ‘The Journey’: That thing that we all do together, however loose or tight we’re tied in.  

The point of all this is not to rinse laundry. Or to raise any woe-is-me sympathies. The point of all this is to show that it’s easy, too easy, to connect all the dots and get blinded. Call it ‘The Blues’ or ‘Grey Patches’ or whatever you want, but the effect of ‘The Swamp’ can get ugly. All the low-points combine and link up like lay-lines to make up some kind of road map for misery.

That mood makes it easy to wallow, to forget all the good and the following:

Yes it’s true all these things are connected, in the way all things connect and have consequence. But it’s not true that’s all that there is. And it’s not true that’s all that there has been.

Sometimes that’s really fucking hard to remember.