How can one explain going through the whole gamut of human emotion in a day? How do you contain the symptoms of a crushing depression and the extravagant fulfilment and elation of a manic high in a 12 hour window.
Today was my last day at work before three months of leave to start healing from the burnout of the last two years- pregnancy, birth, breakdown, return to work, burnout and breakdown again. I managed to ease into the latest breakdown by knowing the signs and taking myself out of the game early enough to preserve some semblance of wellness to the casual observer. Creating pockets of normalcy, at least outwardly, so I could placate my inner achiever that I could at a future point in time come back to the life disintegrating in front of me.
My last day. Starting with the habitual donning of the corporate armour, the dropping off of grumpy children. The guilt of leaving them behind and clenching of teeth to present a front of fragmented professionalism at work. The day from 9am to 5pm was spent in a slump of low mood, alternating between near tears, despair and bursts of energy consumed in an attempt to act normal as tears and exhaustion prickled behind my eyeballs. No chance to just be genuine and sad, instead hiding, concealing and dodging the uncomfortable truth that I could no longer do my job, not in any real way. I was just putting up a front for long enough to allow me to retreat behind the curtain. The awkward explanations about why a previously over-achieving leader was taking a step back for three months. Study, husband traveling, kids- I served up the explanations meekly to avoid the hard questions. To a privileged few I admitted that last year had burnt me out.
Then, 4:30pm the conversation with my boss and a colleague which sent me into the high. I felt the end as near and the conversations were positive and joking and made me feel like I could be genuine and light. The tide was turning, and then my husband and kids came to pick me up and I flipped.
I reflect on this moment and attempt to pause to appreciate the acrobatics for m mind to reverse into an alternate reality of high spirits. To marvel at the lack of borders between the terrible and the elated. How could my consciousness flow from despair to elation so quickly? With the elation building, like molten rock and spreading to fill my previously heavy limbs with energy and hope. I felt light and buoyant. Floating above my ocean of cares and worries which a few hours ago had me tied down on the sea floor in a painful vicelike grip. I vaguely remember at the bottom of those depths eating lunch and looking forlornly at a poor young man who had just asked to sell me a trinket to get $5 and believing sincerely that I was going to end up the same. Believing that my life was over, that I would never feel joy, normalcy, never succeed at anything.
And then a few hours later I am buzzing and cleaning the bathroom with a frenzy of relief and joy. Suddenly all the doubts are crowded out by feeling like I have made the best choice in the world taking time off. All my thought of doom are relegated to another world, another person, another reality.
And I sit here in the hot burning lap of ecstacy knowing logically that it cannot last. Knowing that the higher the up the lower he low. And yet almost completely unacquainted with the person I was a few hours ago.
It is dissociating, unnerving and bizarre.
The elation mellows out in a normal keel, mood and even thought. And towards the evening of the second ay the familiar prickles of anxiety surface to herald a descent back down to the sea floor.
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