Ruby & Row : In a Week

In a Week

TW Abel

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what an interesting week and a half it's been. a good one, nevertheless.

I received this fortune cookie at the Detroit airport two and a half weeks ago.

Do fortune cookies eerily know the future??? Sigh.

I flipped the fortune around to see "anxious" and I smiled.

Starting a week and a half ago, so many feelings have been swirling around it's hard differentiate what's true and what's a shoot-off from anxiety.

Oh, anxiety. hi, old friend.

The worries and doubts and fears and stomach-churning-dreadful feelings that permeate the day. they weave in and out. an ebb and flow of adrenaline and sticky thoughts of sorts.

I don't understand my brain a lot of the time. I'm learning though; anxiety is sometimes quite logical, as it's a repercussion of an overactive mind. It makes sense. But in the moment, when it strikes out of the blue and then lingers on for a few weeks, it just feels... shitty.

Perhaps it's revealing it's own insight, teaching me something i couldn't have known before.

Either way, it's not a fight. there are no winning prospects in this. it's a ride through hills and valleys. have to saddle up with the bumpiness, the sadness that comes.

Surrender again and again. and again.

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This July 27th marked one year off of Prozac. To think of that feels... humbling. Truthfully, I loved the drug in a passive way. It helped me and I didn't even notice... I simply took it as a crutch for I had no idea how else to be helped. I ended up in a psychiatrist's at twenty years old asking/ begging to be treated. I thought I was dying. The doctor stared at me blankly and said, what kind of pill do you want? As if I were choosing between gummy bears or worms. The whole situation was initially bizarre, and a little, (surprise!) unnerving, but it helped me climb out of the hole, enabling me to be able to do the leg work on my own. So for that, Prozac, I am forever grateful.

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Sometimes one just needs to wake at whatever time the internal clock dictates, over-sized night shirt still on, and head onto the balcony with tea in one hand and mellifluous words (some mornings, sonnets; other mornings, zen quotes) flowing off the pages of a book in the other.

A sort of nourishment.

I can't help but feel as if my own writing is worlds away from those I admire, at times. Quality, experience. Sometimes the illusion of Ivy League degrees cloud over, yet we can all rest assure in knowing that a degree, a college, a name, does not equate to an individual's intelligence or success.

On another note, I am deeply indebted to the writing of others I admire. And I mean I am indebted to the beautiful, moving diction. The syntax stringing along the words that make my heart fill up, burst, break.

Like I said, nourishment.