Hello Darkness My Old Friend

I know I haven't blogged here in ages. Lame... I know... but recently I just have been tuned to a more inward station than outwards.

I've posted it several times before, but this time of year seems to always draw me inwards, calls me to hibernate and hide out and reflect and review. It's also the time when I can most easily slip into depression. I tend to withdraw deeper and deeper until I am completely removed and people start to wonder where I've got off to and what my problem is and so forth.

Last year was particularly bad. Everything went to shit, as they say and I slipped farther than I had in a long time. It finally got to the point where my mom came knocking on the door demanding to know why I had quit answering my phone all together, much less going anywhere or doing anything.

I don't know if this year is different because Tim and I are just in a much better place than we were last year. No worrying if he's going to get to stay at work all day. In fact he's working OVERTIME today at CHRISTMAS time. Wow. I don't know if it's because I have grown so much, been through so much in the last year that I'm just stronger, more mature, less dramatic..... I'm not sure where the difference lies, where it comes from. It is just simply different.

I'm still tuned inward. Still reflecting. Still reviewing, but somehow this year I've managed to be able to do it without turning off the phone and closing the blinds and hiding from friends and loved ones. I still go out and spend time with people I care about. I hang out with my friends, I spend time with my family, I answer the phone when people call me and talk until the battery dies. I get up in the morning and get things accomplished. The only thing I've neglected lately is blogging, which is usually something I really enjoy. I don't know if it's been neglected because I've been keeping my fingers busy elsewhere with sewing and wrapping and the piano, or tickling the kids and feeding bottles and fixing snacks... or if it's because for awhile... I've just simply had nothing to say.

I have sat down with actual MINUTES of spare time in which to blog, when the kids are quiet or napping and just stared at that big blank box only to think: Not now. I don't know what to say to you. I don't have anything to share.... YET. And then gotten up to do something else: make a crayon roll, a purse for a little girl, bake something. I've just been busy with life. Too busy to think of how to put my mundane doings into words that are interesting.

Even though I've maintained an outward front, and even though I've been sincerely HAPPY, there is still a little touch of darkness inside... like a cloud brushing across the sun, dimming the whole world for just a moment.... and then it is gone and seconds later is forgotten. That little cloud has long been my companion, though usually it is formidable and dark and full of anger, hurt, depression, worry, anxiety.... I wish I knew why it is so different this time. I hardly recognize it, but it hardly seems worth puzzling over.

Calvin laughed for the very first time this morning and I was the only one who heard. It will take far more than a tiny cloud to cover all those rays of sunshine he gave to me. I'm fairly certain that thousands of Fairies were born in that brief, beautiful moment.