I can’t work it away. Play it away. Sleep, eat, or pray it away. The closest I get to ever really getting rid of it is by pounding the keys—chipping away at mountains with a pick axe—or by drinking just enough so I’m all warmed up and my senses are numbed so I can finally relate to those around me.

There are moments, like now, the Christmas tree gushing with twinkling lights of every color and my daughter coming downstairs for second helpings of just-before-bedtime hugs and my son singing in his room, that I am able to rise up and out of it, but eventually it latches on and works away at me until I’m too tired to remember, speak in complete sentences, or care.

But I’m one of the lucky ones.  And it’s not as bad as it used to be and it doesn’t have the hold it once did and I can recognize when the bottom’s coming up faster than it ought to. And I know that the answer isn’t in the barrel of a shotgun, within the walls of an oven, or at the end of a rope.

We are stronger at the broken places and we last when are able to just wait.

One more day. One more Christmas tree. One more hug or song or sentence.

~ K.J.