the dark wave

It doesn't matter where you are when it happens; you will be overwhelmed.
You could be walking down the street or in the hallway at work and it will overtake you.
You could be driving on the highway or a back road; you could be sitting in your living room or your workspace.

Wherever you are the telltale rumbling in your heart and mind is the only advanced warning you will have.
That warning, always, is too late to do anything about the impending disaster; it WILL take you.

The, once started, will cascade and grow and cannot be stopped.
It cannot be reasoned with or rationalized.
It cannot be dodged.
It cannot be hid from.

It WILL get you.

The wave wells from the inside and bursts forth to drown the happiness and contentment in your being.
It drowns the colors with a dread and blackness.

It overwhelms the now with an icor of darkness.

Then, if you are lucky, it withdraws into a well of depression that drains into a singularity of apathy.

Sometimes the wave is fast and the entire process lasts but a moment; sometimes you are not so lucky and the wave washes over you for an hour or two.

Sometimes, though, the flood of Noah casts you adrift in the sea of despair for days or even weeks.

These are the times that are hardest. These are the times that erodes the will to live. These are the times that one hopes a predator from the deep reaches of the blackness will reach forward and turn off the life inside.

The sea is lonliness personified. The sea is empty. The sea is infinite.

Even knowing that there are countless others who are trapped in their own infinite seas in the same exact desperate situation helps not for the isolation of their sea is just as great a gulf between you as your sea is.... thus the difference is twice an insurmountable barrier.

When the warning happens it is hard to know if one is facing a small wave or a full flood-worthy tsunami. The immediate internal reaction, therefore, is always the same: fear.

Fear of being overwhelmed and lost in the dark sea or dragged into the well.

Facing the fear is a challenge. Facing the reality is more of one.

Facing the dark waves and currents takes ongoing courage with reserves deeper than anyone can understand.

Where does the courage come from? Will it run out?

Will the seas ever stop?

At what point can I relax into my own life and enjoy the mere action of existing?

Sadly, I know not the answers that these questions beg for and, as such, I am hostage to the next wave that lays dormant in my future.
I may encounter it in moments or days or, perhaps, years in the future. But it is there. It is waiting to wash away my day and dissolve my happiness into a torrent of unstoppable power.


So I wait.

So it waits.

We wait together, staring across an unmeasurable gulf of time waiting to collide together; bracing for the impact that will alter the course of time for both of us.... at least for a few minutes, or hours, or days... or forever.