This Side of Invisible

Looking back now, it’s all so obvious. But you know what they say about hindsight… The first time I cut my own hair, we were living in Wyoming, it was summer and I was hot. I was tired of trying to grow my hair out and we didn’t have money that day for me to go to a salon, so I just started chopping. It was liberating. Setting myself free from my heavy, overlong tresses. Okay, let’s be honest, my hair was just reaching my shoulders, but anyone that knows me knows that I’ve had short hair for over fifteen years. It’s just me. Though, there may be a mental block as to why that is… hmmm, I’ll have to ponder that one. I remember feeling like a new woman after giving myself that first haircut. Something inside me felt lighter, a little less stressed, a little less painful. That should have been my first clue. Well, that and the timing… it was a remarkably stressful time for me. Over the past seven years, I’ve continued to sporadically cut my hair. Though it’s gone from ...

A while ago, I was prompted to write about a place I had been, I chose to write about my experience inside depression. INSIDE It’s dark in this place.  The kind of dark that paralyzes every muscle and weighs heavy in one’s lungs. It presses in on my ears with its silence, causing them to ring.  I want to scream, but my mouth won’t open.  Every joint and ligament is tense, waiting to spring into action. The very marrow in my bones struggles against unseen restraints.  Sweat collects on my forehead from the effort.  My head spins as my breathing grows evermore shallow.  I’m on the verge of implosion, though, from outward view it probably seems like a quiet collapse.  It is not quiet.  The shrieking pain of it all pushes blood from my ears. I am dying.   No, I realize.  My fate is worse.  I’m a prisoner here.  Fear has me in his clasp and laughs at my timorous attempt to escape.  Hot tears pool in my ears, not blood, ...

The house is quiet… mostly. Except for the whispers of my boys who are determined not to sleep. Not that I can blame them, there’s a pretty awesome thunderstorm happening right now. I’m sitting in my dark office, watching lightning illuminate the world outside the large picture window. The almost dead, but refusing to die tree in the front yard is rocking rather precariously over my husband’s car. If I close my eyes and listen, I can hear the sophisticated symphony of the storm: wind whooshing, thunder rumbling soft and low in the distance, and rain slapping and tapping and patting the world around me. It’s a lovely lullaby. And yet, I can’t sleep. It's ironic that just a week or so after Bruncle was admitted to a residential treatment facility I was approached about publishing this essay about him. It was almost painful to say "Yes, I'd love to have it published" when it seemed to be null and void. It's not. Not completely anyway, but it felt li...