Me: I feel like I am in a desert. Thirsty and alone. And you’re on the phone telling me “You need to drink water.” Yea, that’s good advice. That is obviously the best course of action, whichever way you look at it. I mean I’m in the desert, I know I need water to survive. BUT, I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIND IT!
***
Picking myself up from rock bottom has proved to be a little more challenging than I thought it would be. After a particularly rough Monday it dawned on me–in a moment of desperate, gut wrenching mental agony–that I might need a little help after all. That sometimes I am not strong enough for me.
***
Her: I just want to try and piece together the type of person you are.
Me: OK.
Later.
Her: How have your sleeping patterns been lately?
Me: I want to sleep all the time. So, I sleep every chance I get. But at night? I have an incredibly difficult time falling asleep.
Her: OK. And your energy levels?
Me: None. I have no energy.
Her: Do you have any motivation?
Pause.
Me: I want to say no. But that would be a lie. There are moments–fleeting moments–where I feel a rush of something–that I can do it, I want to do it. I want to believe that I can do it. I feel, I feel…I can’t describe it.
Her: Maybe the word you are looking for is…hopeful?
Me: Yes! Of course!
***
And I knew right then that if I could not find the word ‘hope’, if ‘hope’ had alluded me, had fallen out of my head as if she had never been there, that I did not even recognize her when she stood right in front of me–even in fleeting moments–and I couldn’t see her?
Then maybe, just maybe, I have asked for help just in time.
