This is an
auto-biographical piece I wrote a couple years ago during a serious bout with
depression. I found it in a
notebook this morning when I was getting ready to go on a bike ride to my local
coffee shop and write a letter with some coffee and breakfast. I read it and I
felt it was a gift I had found it.
When one is in such a dark place there is no describing it to
anyone. Sometimes even yourself. I
know a lot of people have or do suffer from similar things or
are even on the road to recovery.
I thought I would share this as I recover and see the sun brightly at
the end of the tunnel. I know
there may be times when I need to look back and read this, knowing I found some
way to write down a description.
If I was able to do that, I know I had strength I was not aware of which
is a miracle. The real miracle,
though, is we all have that inside us and maybe this will remind us all of
that. (I have revised it slightly compared to the one I found already posted on my blog. The slight difference is something maybe only I find interesting but maybe you will too.)
The flies were
fat and slow as they buzzed and hopped seemingly everywhere the woman chose to
put each part of her body. They
buzzed slowly past her ear and sh could almost decipher what they were going on
about as she wiggled her fingers constantly to shoo them away. In fact, it seemed, they would have landed
on her eyes if it were possible. Even if this were possible, today they would have had only
room to peer through the slits her eyes had become.
She peered back
at them, the flies’ kaleidoscope of vision seeing only a rainbow of dents,
dings and slippage in her normally bright soul. If the fly blinked, which they
rapidly did, it would create a fantastic slide show of what was stuck in her
throat, sinking her hear and creating a slow anesthetic around her otherwise
compulsive optimism.
It
was beautifully horrible and just the thing a fly would enjoy.
It was for this
reason each of her co-workers, family members and a few acquaintances secretly
were happy to see her. No one said
anything about it to each other. It
was not something that came up on the phone, over coffee or as a subject in a
sentence starting with, “Didja’ happen to notice?” No, it was a strange and no
one mentioned it in polite company.
The woman
smelled of spiced oranges with luxurious dark hair that grew with the seasons
as they changed. Thus, the fly
entourage had no explanation to the naked eye or even the human eye. To the fat fly’s eye, who fed on
garbage and mated with the discarded, the cinematic kaleidoscope they saw in
the woman’s eyes was dinner and an ever rotating porn flick.
In such mundane
moments as when the lights went off at night or when she lifted cream soup to
her mouth and blew on it, people did wonder why the woman didn’t do anything
about it. On the other hand, maybe
she was working so hard to do something this was the minimal amount of flies
she could keep from invading her space at a time. Maybe if she did nothing at all, she would be lost inside a
cloud of flies and meet an
unfortunate end from the task of pest control chemicals so strong she couldn’t
breathe anymore. When the cloud cleared and they back to clean up the fly
carcasses they would find her bloated body covered in flies like family weeping
over her in still-life, kissing her eyes.
No one thought
about it for long. Even the
strangest of things become less so the longer they are a part of your life.
They develop a purpose. The woman
and the Fly Entourage were no different.
The flies had been around her since she was three and yes, she had spent
increasing efforts to deter them until it consumed her life and there was room
for nothing as a result of even the few flies remaining by the third decade of
her life.
