9. Melancholy Notes

Today wasn't a great day. That grey pressure seeped in slow and steady. Dark clouds and drizzling rain that finds its way to your skin no matter what didn't help. But it wasn't that. Missing that special someone started in mid-afternoon. A sweet, keening note that plays over and over again through your blood. Wasn't that, either, that caused the sad, lonely ache deep inside.

Being in therapy has helped me greatly to focus, fine tune myself to all my shifting emotions and moods. It's helped me grasp what sets off an emotion and mood.

I sat on the train, damp from the rain, reading my book. That's when it hit. Like a deep, strident chord. The distant sound of a gong. I felt it. Tightening in my throat and chest. Within the pages something hit me full in the face.

The narrator was being, right then and there as I read, emotionally blackmailed and manipulated by her closest friend, the one she relied on, the one who was like family.

Just a small thing, but it stayed in my mind, stuck like drying mud. Playing over and over. Emotions welled up, slowly like water spreading over earth, darkening all it touches.

Sadness for this fictional character because I knew all too well what it felt like to have that happen. To be made to do something against your inner-most will. Resentful for someone ever doing that to another. Anger that people did such a thing. Frustration because when in that situation, if you're not coming from a healthy place, a healthy past, then it is seemingly impossible to extract yourself.

I felt alone and isolated like the rain cutting me off from the others around me. I felt the darkness without working its way within.

I thought about finishing the wine I'd bought the other day, but instead I worked on my room, putting my pictures up, creating art. That melancholy feeling stayed, thoughts straying to that man who has my heart. I missed his voice, I missed telling him everything I've been wanting to tell him. Sometimes it happens like this.

Still I worked on. I didn't write, didn't sit down and make myself think. It wasn't despair or depression or acute loneliness, just a few things that were sifting through my blood. I let my thoughts free form and these things came to me with ease.

But now, everything looking good around me, cat curled up on my feet, I am struck by how similar this situation was to one when I just started therapy.

My second session and I got home, feeling emotionally devestated. I locked myself in my room, wrote on my computer. Inside the wolves tore me apart. Emotions rioted. It seemed I would never get through the night intact.

And then I cried like I would never be able to stop. I desperately wanted to pick up the phone and call the one person I knew I couldn't. So instead, I wrote him a letter that would never be sent. I wrote out all the devestation inside of me. And the storm passed.

I realised then that it would always be so. Storms cannot be sustained forever, eventually they will dissipate, and blue skies and warm breezes will return, bringing with them the fragrance of hope and happiness.

Tonight, as then, I kept thinking of Lilo and Stitch, the Disney animated film. In it, a genetically engineered alien, designed to destroy all it comes across crashlands on Earth. He lives with a little girl who loves him, even though his badness levels are unusually high. Stitch starts to learn what love is because of the unconditional love this little girl gives him, and through love, he learns loneliness and the pain of not fitting in because of his background. He runs away to find family (though family, is of course where the love is, and that's with the little girl, Lilo).

I felt like Stitch. Alone in the forest, feeling lost, trying to find family, trying to fit in, to belong. It's such a horrible, frightening feeling. That moment has always made me want to cry.

Now I understand why. Stitch, too, is a product of his upbringing, his wiring wasn't his decision. And as he starts to grow past that, to realise different paths are open to him apart from destruction; it's painful and scary, but he fights all he learned, was wired to feel and act, and becomes someone who is fully realised, not only capable of love, but being loved and finds somewhere to belong because he finds himself.

I get that, too. That's why tonight isn't bad, just melancholic. I realised I am the one responsible for completely loving me. Finding myself means I will always belong. And I'm really getting there.

The rain is still out there, but right now I am warm and content. Listening to music that suits the low-key melancholia of my mood.

Each day is getting better. Because I realise, it's about me, no one else.

Not even my mother.

Just me.