The Well

This morning I awoke very tired. I did not sleep well, but also am overly exhausted from a series of dance workouts and just simple work around the house, I suppose. Today is a day that I really needed my program of recovery to step in and save me. And though I yelled “Fuck you guys!” at one point to Steve and my Dad, and felt generally angry at the world for a good part of the day, I still think that the work I have been doing on my mental health and spiritual program may have sincerely helped me.

After my meeting, I wrote a check for two cans of garbage and left the house to drive the truck to the dump by myself. I said nothing, for I feared if I spoke, the anger just might come to the surface and explode out of me. I kept my cool, and pulled the truck onto the 35 mile an hour two lane road. About two hundred yards later, the aluminum cans which were placed in the rear of the truck sticking out from the cover, exploded all over the road, spreading about 30 crushed, empty, (and rinsed), cans over both lanes. I quickly parked the truck and got out and went after the cans. I was not sure how I was going to gather them, and did not really think it through. As I approached the cans, a truck came around the corner and gave me a sympathetic wave as they averted the mess and drove onto the grass to not drive over the cans. I picked about half of them up, binding them in half of my sweater, and kicked the rest off of the road while I went to empty my sweater so that I could come back and get the rest of the cans.

All was well, and I proceeded to the dump and executed all that was involved, (backing the truck up several times, emptying two cans of trash, dealing with soaking wet paper recycling that was not mine and fishing it back out of the paper dumpster), and returned home.

Somehow, I felt that my feelings were not being taken into account. But the reality is that this was not really the case. I still am not sure what it was that was bothering me so much, what my unresolved anger was about, and I know that I did not explain the total of the situation in the paragraphs above. But somehow I know, that the work I have been doing, the attention to my mental health and recovery, did come into play today. I was able to function for the most part, and in a scene where in my past I probably would have fallen to my knees on the side of the road and started wailing in frustration, grief, and tears, I simply went about emotionlessly solving the circumstance that lay before me.

There are times in my life, that I can feel a deep, deep well of emotion just below the surface, and I do not know how to give it a name. I feel my entire life with me in those moments, watching me, staring at me from down in the well, and the person down in the well, just wants a voice. She wants to be witnessed, she wants to express all that has pushed her down there, into the cold waters. The only thing that can reach her there is silence, solitude, and perhaps a slow instrumental classical tune.

The blowing of the wind in the trees today, the low autumn light, and the classical music in my earbuds, all accent this emotional state. Every now and then, and it has been some time since this has happened, I am returned to and reminded of all that cannot be put into words.