Starts, Stops and Depression By Joe S. Thomas

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I’ve had a few starts and stops on the unfortunate and very true story I’d like to tell about how I ended up here where I’m having to live now and why I can’t seem to get away…  The manic episode, the arrests due to said manic episode, the beating that left me with two concussions, three broken ribs and a punctured lung from the four cops who thought it would be fun to do that to someone who was handcuffed and unable to defend himself, the week long stay at a hospital for those injuries and then a week long stay at the mental hospital for observation, the loss of my home, my dog and my fiance due to all of this, and finally, having to stay with people I can barely stomach to keep from becoming homeless…  Not to even mention daily PTSD…  And then of course two years after all of this, my sister with whom I had to move in with dies of Metastatic Breast Cancer…  But not before losing the only grandparent (my mother’s mom) I ever cared for and who actually cared for me…  It’s been a tough go and to be quite honest I will be glad when I no longer have to try to kick it from my brain…  If that’s even possible…  I’m currently reading Elizabeth Ellen’s Her Lesser Works which is a collection of some of her shorter stories…  One story, the one about the woman who gets a non-cancerous tumor in her stomach has caused me to dwell on some fairly weird thoughts…  To my knowledge I don’t have anything like that going on, but it made me start thinking about if I did have some terminal disease, where I would want to spend my remaining days if it were an option…  The sad part is I used to live there and perhaps the saddest part is that it would probably never happen again…  Even if I were dying…  Also, the way in which I was hurt by my ex leaves me scratching my head as to why I would head to this place if it were up to me…  I believe it was the peace of mind that I truly took for granted the 12 years or so I had this place within my grasp while my life was actually going pretty damn good…  Trust me, there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t kick the fuck out of myself mentally and sometimes even phyisically…  Though technically speaking I couldn’t help having mental troubles…  That seems to be the cruel and unfair part…  If there’s one thing I know without a doubt it’s that life isn’t fair and nobody promised it would be…  It’s true and it hurts…

There are times when I’m laying in the very small, single bed in which I await sleep, I close my eyes and think back to times that I didn’t know were going to be so goddamn special and pure…  Like the times I spent mowing the yard on the John Deere lawn mower…  I would place my headphones on my head and listen to the Velvet Underground, Dinosaur Jr., Black Flag or whatever in the world I was in the mood to hear…  At the time I would have told you I hated mowing and taking care of the two acres at the end of the dead end road my fiance and I used to share…  I could tell you even now every bump, hole, tree root, flower we’d planted and rock to dodge…  I can close my eyes and feel the sweat beading underneath my cap before it dripped down my face and onto my chest…  I can still feel the summer air and smell the grass during the first cut of the year…  I picture the endless blue sky with the largest, puffiest, white clouds that made me honestly think of creation as I dwelled upon them…  Feeling that I could just reach up and touch them…  After the yard was mowed and weedeated, I would walk inside and get my dog who weighed 6 lbs soaking wet and my fiance for a walking inspection of my work…  I loved to hear her tell me how beautiful it all looked and how well I took care of everything like that…  Our dog acting like he was a German Shepherd rather than a Chihuahua with his tiny little chest all puffed out and proud as the other neighborhood dogs barked jealously at him…  He was king of the road…  Still is…  Always will be in my heart…  After our walk and as the sun began to go down I would unroll the waterhose and water the plants my fiance and I had planted together…  Always commenting on their growth from the previous year…

Goddamn, who was to know one night of a bad mental health episode could ruin every single small thing I’d learned to hold dear even if I didn’t quite know it yet…  Knowing there’s no way to go back and change the things that happened, the things that were said and the actions that were taken…  Such a godawful, heartbreaking feeling…  Certainly painful and damn sure unfair…  But we’ve discussed fairness already…  

I suppose I can just chock this piece up to yet another start and stop in the long line of trying to properly get this story out of my system…  Sometimes it’s just too damn hard, too damn heartbreaking to continue dwelling on it…  This is yet again one of those horrible times…  Forgive me…  Perhaps next time…