The Downward Spiral

It starts simply enough.  One little, insignificant thing gets under your skin.  Maybe it's a conversation you had with your significant other; maybe it's something at work; maybe it's just your favorite outfit suddenly seems ill-fitting and a poor choice.  It doesn't matter what it is, but it stays with you.  It wears on your mind when nothing else does, you find yourself going over and over it again and again, over analyzing and picking apart innuendos that (probably) don't exist.

Then you start to notice things.  Things like having to repeatedly ask for a simple task such taking laundry baskets to the basement so you can do his laundry and discovering them still unaccomplished.  They way dishes are stacked in the sink, sloppily, begging a too-curious cat to distribute their weight just so and potentially breaking three plates, four bowls, and a coffee mug in the process.  How whenever you'd die for some quiet, quality time, he pushes past you to his video game console and begins shooting things, sometimes at full volume, sometimes (if lucky) on mute because he saw the irritation on your face in the reflection of the television.  

The bickering starts.  You find yourself yelling about how he put the milk in the fridge (not where it goes, where you put it); snapping at him about his lack of respect for your things when he's thrown away your address labels and keeps using your laptop for music and projects instead of his (identical) own.  The pets are too needy and he refuses to discipline them.  People start coming out of the woodwork that "want to catch up" and all ask the same five questions over and over.  It sounds like he resents your medical expenses.  You feel no rest, no reprieve, and the guilt that surfaces when you want to just sit and read for twenty minutes makes you bitter towards almost everyone and everything.

You start to ignore his very inconsistent attempts at just affection.  How can he expect you to want to be touched when he can't even do one simple thing you ask him?  You find yourself eying people at work, sure their behaviour towards you drips with passive-aggression and it takes all your energy to not explode and tell them what you really think about this, that, and the other.  You scream at people on the roads who drive poorly.  Every task you accomplish has an underlying current of violence about it, as if your frustration and disgust permeates everything you touch.  You become vaguely aware of the changes in your thought pattern, in your view on life and society, and it feels as if there is a rabbit hole above your head, just barely big enough to climb out if you were to give it all your effort.  But you're too angry to care right now -- surely this will pass, once X,Y, and Z stressors resolve themselves.

And then it happens.  Something you may not have been expecting.  Something larger than you, something out of your control completely.  And it has you.  You struggle with it day and night, your dreams reek of it, your thoughts race about it, your every conversation somehow gets turned around and centered on this thing that's eating you alive. You appear to handle it well.  You begin to believe that you are handling it, though it feels strangely wrong and unresolved despite these sentiments.  The build up becomes unbearable, and then just like that, it's over.  Whatever happens happens and you're left in it's anti-climactic aftermath.  Yet there's still so much emotion, so much confusion, so much you could have said or done or not said or done to change the outcome.  The grief and relief mix; the overbearing weight of it all flusters you and steals your concentration, your self-discipline.

You get into a huge, ring-throwing blow-out fight because something he said just broke your heart and no amount of pleas claiming he said the wrong thing can fix it.  He's always saying the wrong things when he's trying to be honest, and when he says the right things you know he's just saying what he thinks you want to hear.  None of it's real, none of it is pertinent.  You gesture angrily towards the empty room in which you both stand, and he physically recoils, a reminder that you have let this so-called "mixed state" get the best of you before.  You dissolve into tears, uncontrollable, angry tears as you can barely speak the hate you feel towards all of life at the time.  It all starts crashing down then, everything you've been carrying inside of you for the span of eternity, but especially as of late.  The sound in your head is like a thousand glasses breaking as uncountable pieces of drum kits fall over and scatter across a cold stone floor.  Cacophony, you think, randomly remembering a ninth-grade vocab word.  That's what that's called.

You go to bed not angry, just defeated.  You wake up the next day feeling under water, sluggish, slowly drowning in inky blackness.  You feel it in your bones, the way you squint accusingly at the sunlight, the immense dread in your chest towards having to utter a word to anyone all day.  There is no more rabbit hole, and you hear a voice telling you that you should have got out while you still could.  Everything makes you scared and feel alone.  There is minimal socially acceptable effort to be presentable to the outside world, though you barely leave the house as it is, breaking social engagements and constructing fables to not go to work.  Even contact with those you love the dearest is painful -- to the touch, to the ear, to the eye -- because they look at you with such concern and they won't just leave you alone.  You begin to live and die for the moments you are alone -- your plans consistently get procrastinated simply so you don't have to spend the energy to accomplish the minutiae.  You stop taking care of yourself, though a constant nagging pull chides you for not going to the gym, not folding the laundry, not letting the cat on your lap right now.

Nothing holds interest.  You cry at the drop of a hat, loud, pained sobbing that when alone, brings you to the brink of hyperventilation, scaring the pets who come trepidatiously to your side, confusion and worry in their most primal form on their faces.  The slightest bit of kindness from a stranger or acquaintance renders you a blubbering mess -- how could they possibly know how you feel right now?  The attempts at connection with him feel forced, because you know he knows what's going on and he thinks he can fix it -- no, that he can fix you.  You resent his puppy-dog eyes, brimming with love and caring, because they aren't there for you all the time, when you're happy or stressed or when you just plain need him ... but you give in to his requests because it's easier than fighting with him right now.

You have too many responsibilities to give up completely, and the thought alone weighs you down even further.  You try to remind yourself that this too shall pass, as it always does, and there will be only brighter days ahead ... you just don't know how far away they are, and the not knowing feels like it can crush you like a tiny flower unnoticeable on a thick trail.  You try to find little things to make each day bearable -- coffee in the morning, small bites of chocolate here and there, extra-hot or extra-long showers regardless of who needs to bathe after you, conversations with photographs of loved ones no longer there to comfort you as they once could.

The winter will melt.  Things will change whether you're prepared or not.  It will most likely get worse before it gets better.  But it will get better.  And you may learn to handle it better.  Or you may not.  

This comes with the territory and the path you've chosen.  It's cyclical, just like life.  This is just the downward spiral, and eventually you will spiral back upwards again.  It's not as simple as you tell people -- there is a great deal of gray space in the connection between the polarities on a magnet.  To get from north to south is much more of a journey than a simple flip of a switch.