In the Middle of the Seesaw

Did you ever play on a seesaw or teeter totter when you were a kid? We had some large wooden ones in our town park and I use to walk up them from one side to the middle. There I would balance the two sides until I got them exactly level.

The kicker of coarse, was that I wasn't doing anythinge else. I could'nt play with others unless I was willing to jump off and let the seesaw crash one direction or the other. Even as a child, releasing that sort of control was hard for me to do.

I find myself in the same place now. After years of confining depression and months of numbing medication, every day I find more of my old self present. More of my spit and viniger. :)

Sure, that sounds fine to the uninitiated. But the world I am returning to is not the world I use to know. I'm not the person I was before the last few years took place; my spouse, after looking out for me the last few years, isn't the carefree guy he use to be either. Nothing is the same, so I am afraid to take a step out of the middle.

But the middle seems to keep moving. I don't want to lay around and read; which I was close to winning the "most consecutive books ever read" cateorgy of the Worlds Records. I actually am having trouble keeping my interest in a book. It took me three days to read a book I've already read 3 or 4 times in the past. (For those of you that don't know me that well, I can easily read 1-2 full length novels a day.)

My local friend is working almost full-time now, so she's not avaiable to hang with. One daughter is in CO and the other in school/work/other town full time. Even my cousin Lori is moving on with her life; new job starts tomorrow. So my late night IM partner in crime will be gone.

And while my interest in completing projects I've had laying around forever is returning, I'm almost afraid to get involved in them. I find myself doing stupid little projects I can post as ehows; and not doing the more complicated ones I can add as patterns. Just stuck in the middle.

I'm sort of working on the quest bath, sanding walls and stuff. And I do have a reawakening desire to "nest". To clean, organize, decorate. But something holds me back there too. Well, sometimes that something is Will, but sometimes it's not. It's me; afraid to move to far to the side of the living. Those strange people who seemingly participate in life and the world around them.

The issue is control. In an odd way, while depressed (and even on anti-depressents) I felt in control. I didn't clean house, make meals, or do other things because I just didn't feel like it. I didn't want to visit other people or go walk in the mall. I didn't want to go fishing. I, I, I . . .

It wasn't really that I was in control so much as that my life was a small place and I was the queen bee. Everything resolved around me and my illness, my issues.

Now I know I need to step out of the center and approach the scary side of the seesaw. I wish I could run wildly towards it, knowing I'd jump off just in time to prevent a disaster and laugh in the face of fate. But I'm to scared. I'll move towards the end I need to get off of, but I will take baby steps and hold my hands out wide for balance. Hell, I might even back up a step or two every now as I feel the world begin to tilt. But I want to live in a world occupied with more experiences and more people than I have the last few years.

I want to get off the middle of the seesaw.