Asha

I have days when I remember that I used to be better than this...heading on my way towards awesome. Which may sound narcissistic, but hey, it was an honest feeling.

After months of being in the very darkest of depressions, I was finally seeing the light in myself, in the place I lived, in the people I surrounded myself with. Job situation sucked horribly, but at least I had days, hours, moments, where I could feel the light...

But now it's dark.

There are a lot of things you don't think of when you're unemployed, in an unhappy place, floundering under an ever approaching deadline. Simple things people who are not in the same situation take for granted. Like having food. Feeding your dog. Being able to wash your clothes, your sheets, having a bed to sleep in...things to occupy your brain when you're lonely. Even very simple things feel impossible - and well-meaning friends feel distant, their words callous and unfeeling. Why tell me that "everyone is going through money problems" and, as evidence, tell me a story of how you won't be able to fly first class to your Mexican getaway this year because of "the economy"? Really? Dude, I am mentally jacking you for your wallet so I can feed my dog for a few days. Maybe put some gas in my increasingly illegal car. Maybe pay my phone bill so I don't get so lonely I start feeling suicidal...

Real shit. Don't bring me the fake shit.

I had someone (a "friend") offer up the idea of selling my last commodity to pay my bills. I thought about it. I'm both ashamed and not ashamed to admit that I thought about it, weighed the options, mentally calculated how long I would have to "sell" in order to bring some order to my life...then I got very depressed that, given the woman I was, the light I once had, that I would have to entertain THAT as a viable option...

I guess I'm trying to explain that rock bottom seems to go deeper than I ever thought possible.

You'd think I'd racked up years of torment, of bad karma, for everything from baby-kicking to living off puppy burgers. Okay, yuck, that was a gross image.

Still.

Everyday I think about the girl I used to be. Even in pictures, videos, old blog posts, I see a woman incredibly different from the woman I cringe at in the mirror. Everyday I wonder how much longer I can go on like this - "living" but not.

My proudest scholastic accomplishment? My 4.0? Tonight I feel like saying "Fuck that - worry about whether you're going to be able to eat today or tomorrow or the next day."

Somehow...somehow my life has reached a point, such a low point, that yesterday, as I waded in the ocean, I thought "you know what would be great right now? A man-eating shark."

This. This right here. It's my own personal version of what Job would have felt. It's beyond the bottom. There is an alternative - a nasty, horrible, soul-killing alternative - and every day it looks more attractive. It's not "hard" or "rough". It doesn't "suck". Telling me you are "praying for me", that "everyone goes through this" when I know FOR A DAMN FACT YOU HAVE NEVER GONE THROUGH THIS, or to "keep my head up"....Fuck you.

Dammit. Do you see how "not me" I am?

I would give everything I don't have (because, truly, there isn't anything left) to have someone pull me in and hold me close in silence for a while. To let me breathe in the good, the hope, to share a little bit of light with me. Everyday I think about you - the girl I used to be - and I wonder if I made you up.

I don't think I can be Asha anymore. Readers, ever Google the name for its meaning? "The golden, blazing, water with the ability to determine truth." The light that - even in the darkness - is able to detect and determine what is real, what isn't...

I started this blog in an effort to peel the layers back from myself, to the very essence of me, and to be unafraid of, to fully claim, all that I find there.

I didn't expect my external journey to so greatly inhibit this internal one...

But maybe...maybe to fully understand the light, you must embrace the dark. The yang of yourself. I am encountering things...things I did not know about myself, things I thought I would never do, never contemplate doing or having to do, in the name of that spark, that quick glimpse of my happy self I saw, I felt....and it feels...so damn wrong. Like the world is wrong and I don't know how to fix it so that I can move forward.

For a time, I let myself imagine a better life, and I lived in that false image. Nothing was real. The hurts didn't hurt - the fire didn't burn. So - very suddenly - I was thrust into the real world, forced to face the love that wasn't, the faith that may have been the first thing I gave up on, the reality of being alone in this. No one is holding my hand, watching my back, bandaging the scrapes, scars...bruises. The everyday pain is overwhelmed by what it takes to wake up every day, to try, to plan and re-plan, to fail, go to sleep, knowing that you will be faced with it all again the next day...

I know how I sound. I know what I feel. I don't know...if tomorrow will be the day I give in. If tomorrow will be the day when I finally "curse God and die", losing myself completely...

I don't want to lose but I don't know if I'm still fighting or just going through the motions and slowly giving in.

Give me strength.

A.