Where am I?

Roi called. He's on a little family getaway for his father's 80th birthday. I didn't pick up but in the message he said he hoped I was enjoying the beautiful weekend, that I was serene, etc, and that it was certainly beautiful and serene where he was. 

I started talking back to the message. 

"No, I'm not fucking serene, I'm depressed." 

"No, I'm not enjoying the beautiful weekend, I'm curled in the fetal position on the couch watching movie after movie because it's the only thing I can do that doesn't make me feel crazy, lost, scared, and alone." 

I went out to get some groceries earlier. I moved through the store like a robot, trying to remember what this used to feel like. That's how life is now. Everything numb and mechanical and the remembering that somehow it used to be different. That I used to laugh. That I used to enjoy sights and sounds and scents. That I had ambition. That imperfect though things were I always had hope for tomorrow and that meant I could do what needed to get done today. 

I go to therapy, I'm getting the neurofeedback, I am even talking to someone on Monday about a new job (possibly, maybe, please say a little prayer), and I've looked at apartments. I do all this because it makes sense that these are the only things I can do to help myself. Yet I am unmoved, unchanged. Still floating in that black void within myself, so far from anything to grab hold to. There is no texture, no sound. 

"Hope" is transformed into duty to self. The actions that make sense even if I don't feel anything from them. 

I think back again to our therapist suggesting that, who knows, maybe Roi and I will find a way to one day be friends. How? How could I befriend someone who watched as I slid away into darkness, who heard my cries and reached his hand to me only to pull it away again and again?

It was never up to Roi to save me, I know that now. But to consider the possibility of being his friend? 

Last night I watched House of Spirits, a movie based on the novel by Isabelle Allende. I don't want to spoil it, but I will say that the husband and father of the house becomes increasingly controlling and sets into motion events that will deeply wound every member of his family. His wife refuses to speak to him ever again after he does something she will not forgive, and yet she continues to love him and be kind to him. Because of this, her daughter learns to forgive and to love and to live in light. 

Maybe somehow this is what the therapist means and hopes for us.