there's no happy ending, so they say

It took me back to the times I felt inconsolable. Comparatively, proportionally, he was doing well. I'd fallen apart at the seams for much less. I remember one of the worst moments, stranded in Southern California, young, naive, the sun cheerfully shining incongruously to the ruins my life felt to have become.

Before that, all month before that, I'd had this uneasy feeling. Drenched in sunlight, feeling the world so filled with possibilities, hearing everyone sound so sure that the pieces would fall into place for me, I had gone there with the kind of confidence and hope that I'd never previously exhibited. Inside, I found it strange, the shift. But I thought, well, after dark years, the world has turned around. I did not think I was on the verge of failure.

And so I was alone and the sunshine made things worse, I remember. I recall walking aimlessly down the street, arms limp, feeling that sun beating down on me oppressively. It wasn't too hot. But the sun surrounding me only served to make me feel more lonely. I longed for drenching rain that dripped from my hair. I longed for the cold night to bite at my cheeks, to give me a headache. Instead I walked about aimlessly like a zombie in broad daylight.

Tomorrow I will write about recovery, about the weirdness of recovery, how it does not have any prescribed process, how it often has no explanation or order, how it just miraculously happens. But right now, I keep wondering how people manage to put themselves at risk of falling apart, like I did that sunny afternoon.