January Depression Part II – Cuts You Up
Move the heart
Switch the pace
Look for what seems
Out of place…
Cuts You Up – Peter Murphy
Driving, no destination in mind, just driving to escape and to empty my mind. Attempting to hit the reset button buried deep in my subconscious.
My brain is broken, or at least the records in my mind are on constant replay… they repeat, repeat, repeat… voices from the past, the present, and even made up conversations in my head about the future are on a non-stop loop.
Louder and louder they get, even as I turn the stereo in my car louder.
Driving East, I soon find myself traveling South. Finally out of the city limits the speed goes from 60 to 70 and I push down hard on the accelerator. If the weather were warmer I’d roll the windows down and crank the heat, but we are deep in January and I don’t want to freeze.
Finally able to breathe and think without tears welling up in my eyes from frustration, I sigh deeply and set the cruise control – 72 miles per hour. My brain is starting to calm down and all tension leaves my body.
But wait…
My fucked up brain isn’t finished with me. Somewhere between Medina and Lodi, not another car on the road in either direction, I hear a voice inside my head…
“Jerk the wheel and let the car roll. No one else will get hurt, just you.”
Fuck my broken brain.
Needless to say, I didn’t follow through… although for about three seconds I was tempted to. Those three seconds seemed like an eternity. Of course, my stupid brain replied,
“Yeah, you’d probably fuck that up, too, and we’d be a fucking vegetable and even more miserable.”
And so I kept driving while the thoughts piled up in my head.
Can something in my life to go normal and right for me for once? Just one thing going in the right direction could make all the difference right now to my tortured brain.
I am a highly sensitive person living in a world of chaos and people who don’t recognize my gifts and talents because I don’t have a fucking college degree “showing I can be taught.”
I’m also exhausted beyond exhaustion from being ignored for the awesomeness and beauty I have inside because most people are programmed to look at the outer shell of society’s fucked up standard of beauty.
I’m tired of having to prove my worth from every single angle. I’m forty-fucking-six years old, when does this shit stop?
I thought about driving to Columbus, even, and popping in to surprise visit my friend Charlie at work, but I’m not that spontaneous anymore. Instead, I exited the highway in Ashland, still in a bit of a daze from my almost attempted suicidal car stunt.
Driving down the road, I found a parking lot where I parked, took off my seat belt, and reclined for a few minutes, sobbing; my jaw hurt from clenching during my drive, so I took a few ibuprofen. I breathed in deep and closed my eyes for a few minutes in an attempt to ground and center myself.
And then “Cuts You Up” by Peter Murphy starts playing…
This song has been one of the few songs I can listen to on repeat for hours on end. It is perfection. Aside from that, “Cuts You Up” has always been my saving grace over the years. It’s saved me from jumping off the proverbial and actual ledge more than once over the years.
“Cuts You Up” is a beautiful song that is instantly soothing to my broken brain, from the music to the lyrics, and of course, Peter’s velvety smooth voice that always has the power to lull my troubled mind into a peaceful state.
On and on it goes
Calling like a distant wind
Through the zero hour, we’ll walk
We’ll cut the thick and break the thin
No sound to break no moment clear
When all the doubts are crystal clear
Crashing hard into the secret wind
It was in that moment, I breathed in deep, put my seat in the upright position, and started driving towards home as “Cuts You Up” ended. All the years I’ve survived up until now, all the heartbreak, heartache, disappointments, and even failures, made me realize what I am going through now is just another chapter in that book, and certainly wasn’t going to be the last chapter.
I’m a survivor with hard-earned battle scars. I looked down at the tattoo on my right forearm and smiled.
I designed the tattoo after the three of swords tarot card, three swords piercing a bleeding heart, surrounded by open wings and a banner at the top that reads in Latin, “Luctor et emergo” – I struggle and emerge.
Yes, indeed, I do, always.
When it rains it pours they say… well it is January and I’m stuck in an ice jam, but the nice thing about ice jams, they eventually melt and the natural flow returns.
Spring needs to hurry the fuck up.