Wobble

I can feel myself sinking. The euphoria of moving has worn off. So has the half life of my SSRIs. I wept on the way to work. The monotony and isolation of my daily tasks ground together with the harried tension of my after work commitments, bound together by my OCD addiction to yoga at lunchtime, salve to my loneliness from not being able to speak to most of my colleagues.

Sometimes it all gets too much.

The joy I should feel in pulling together decorations, cake, invites and gifts for my daughter’s tea party feel instead like chores; the gentle rebuffs from her fledgling friends feel like personal attacks. The weather, the smudged public face of my relationship with Tom, my bickering with Sam about the dog: the horror, the horror.

I should get over myself, but I can’t.

You’re doing well, Sam said, and in many respects it’s true. But in many respects it is not.

The why bothers are edging out the keep calm and carry ons.

Hopefully it won’t last.

On Saturday, my sister Jess, the little one, Jonah’s aunt at two weeks his senior, is coming to visit. We’re having  a family do to show off the new house and celebrate Ava’s fifth, and big sister Kate’s little one turning two . Jess looks like me a quarter of a century ago, but Asian and with better clothes. I doubt she remembers who I am, and if she does, her mother will have poisoned her against me, as the family black sheep.

I am seeing my father for the first time in years. I wonder whether he has grown fatter, balder, more difficult. I suspect, it being the way of the world, he has. And that is why depression will always win over optimism. Every time.

But pug John Milton’s back tomorrow from settling in at Sam’s.  He can nibble off my corners and I will be lifted. That and Ava’s birthday cake, which  Tom and me will make in our annual extravaganza of sugar based teamwork. And jelly shaped like a rabbit.

It’s not so bad, afterall.