Time disappears

When you're in a depression, time just disappears. Literally. While time seems to go slow when you're depressed, it's quick and gone when you look back. You just sit there wondering where it went, all the ideas of things to do, promises to fulfill, places to go, all just gone like the wind. Time just disappeared.

That's what's happened most of this year. Back in January I was working on making prints and photo cards. By February I had all the print done, about a half dozen stacks of 6 prints for each of 10 print in a card set. I made it through one pile of prints. Then I had a root canal and recovered from a bone infection with the root canal. Then I just felt like crap and never recovered.

And now it's mid-May, two-plus months gone. I have some things to show for it, but no new cards made, no photo trips beyond the occasional walk around, and only a handful of Web pages done for the photo guide and early history projects. My body got through the problems, but only to realize I still haven't done much on my running program.

It simply disappeared. Time. Not because being older the perception of time changes, which it does, but that it did go by without much to show. And add the promises I made but didn't do and the card sets I was supposed to send (which were really supposed to be Christmas gifts but I was sick Thanksgiving to past New Years). And the to do list still with little marked off as done.

Time is like that in a depression, simultaneously quick and forever. The hours seem to drag and the days seem to disappear behind you, and you wake up months later wondering what happened and where were you all that time. You disappeared too, into the darkness, lost in a endless tunnel complex with only the occasional glimpse of light. You lost yourself too.

It's like the misty rain in a spring storm, gently falling, relentlessly and seemingly forever. You can't hide from it and you can't get dry. Everything just weighs, feels heavy and your body tired and sleepy. You want to sleep but you hate sleep because you can't sleep and will have to wake up tomorrow. And go through this again, the fog and mist invading your world and your being.

Time and you just go by and just went. Both gone. Just existing. And then just history. And you wait for the storm to pass, the rain to quit, the sun to appear. And you wait. And wait some more, never realizing the wait disppears too, as time and you disappear. Sometimes you give up and go out into the rain, to know you're still alive.

And there you find nothing changed, you're only standing there alone, surrounding by the fog and rain where you can't tell where and when anything is anymore, only you standing there for a moment, and another. Before you go back inside to realize there nothing changed, everything is still waiting for you, to remind you what hasn't been done.

And the choices ahead all seem like work, too much work, even if you know you should do something. Sweep the floor. Anything, but waiting. Except waiting seems to always feel the best answer, even though you know it's the worst answer. Energy has disappeared too. And you wait for that, but it won't come without work, which you don't want to do.

And so you sit. Waiting for something you know not when or what. Waiting. And hoping it's soon. Really soon. But you don't know if that's true or real, or just a wish or a hope. You can't decide because that's work. You just want it to happen, and begin to feel better, if only for a moment. And maybe another moment. Hope the moments last. Last longer than the wait.

When the moments happen, you pray they don't disappear too. Like everything else, except everything you haven't done is there around you like clutter, there and in your mind. The clutter you can't see through or around to see your way through. You have to just go. Forward. And hope. And wait. If only for a moment. And then another moment.