Little pieces of glitter
One week from today, I’ll be back to my “normal” life.
The court hearing will be over. I’ll go back to work. I’ll answer emails and attend meetings and talk about things that somehow still matter, even though my entire life has radically changed.
Like nothing happened.
Like my identity hasn’t shifted.
Like the narrative I’ve spent my entire life telling myself hasn’t suddenly been rewritten.
And the strangest part is—I don’t know what comes next.
I’m not even sure I know what happiness looks like anymore.
I don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like. I don’t know how I feel about where I live. My car is broken down. This house is too much for me to manage sometimes. Money is stressful. And there are moments when I look around and realize how incredibly alone I feel trying to hold all of this together.
And all three of my kids are coming this weekend.
What a beautiful, incredible, crazy, chaotic life.
Depression has been gloomy around here lately.
Not necessarily dramatic. Not always catastrophic.
Sometimes it’s simply heavy.
But lately, I’ve started finding light in the tiniest places.
Some of it is light I don’t remember seeing before.
Little pieces of glitter scattered through a life I thought I understood.
My sink has been stopped up for two weeks. It smelled awful. Every time I walked into the kitchen, it was another reminder of something I hadn’t managed to fix.
Today, it finally got fixed.
I sorted all my laundry.
There is a load in the washing machine right now, and I actually set a timer so I’ll remember to put it in the dryer.
There is food in my refrigerator.
There is a baby on my couch waiting to snuggle with me.
And suddenly, somehow—
it is a beautiful life.
Not because everything is fixed.
It absolutely is not.
I still don’t know what I’m doing about the house.
Or the car.
Or relationships.
Or money.
Or work.
Or what happens when the court hearing ends and everyone else goes home and I’m left standing in the strange aftermath of something I spent years waiting for.
I don’t know who I am on the other side of this yet.
Maybe I don’t have to.
Maybe tonight it is enough that the sink drains.
The laundry is washing.
There is food in the refrigerator.
My children are coming home.
There is a little person waiting for me to climb onto the couch.
And there are tiny pieces of glitter showing up in places that used to be dark.
I also don’t want to forget this:
Self-sabotage and self-preservation can look remarkably similar when you’re surviving.
Sometimes staying down is your body begging for rest.
Sometimes staying down becomes the thing keeping you from living.
And maybe the difference isn’t something anyone else gets to decide for you.
Maybe you learn it slowly.
Maybe you forgive yourself for the days when survival was all you could accomplish.
And whenever you are ready—
not when the world thinks you should be ready,not when everyone expects you to return to “normal,”not when the calendar says the hard part is supposed to be over—
whenever you are ready,
get up.
Put the laundry in the dryer.
Clean one corner.
Feed yourself.
Hold your babies.
Notice the glitter.
And do it.
Whatever it is.
Because this life is unfinished.
So am I.
And tonight, I think that might be one of the most beautiful things about it.
Self-sabotage and self-preservation can look remarkably similar when you’re surviving.
And I’m learning how blurry that line can get.
It looks like drinking coffee all day because making something to eat feels like too much effort—then chasing it with beer at night because you’re finally ready to stop feeling everything.
It looks like going to bed at 9 p.m. because you’re exhausted, but refusing to wash your face or brush your teeth because somehow those two tiny things feel impossible.
It looks like staying home because your car is broken down.
And then continuing to stay home even when you have a ride.
It looks like binging because something inside you desperately wants comfort.
And then not eating at all.
Sleeping because your body needs rest.
Sleeping because you don’t want to participate in the day.
Canceling plans because you need peace.
Then realizing you’ve slowly made your world so small that nobody can reach you inside of it.
Sometimes I genuinely cannot tell whether I am taking care of myself or disappearing from myself.
And maybe that’s part of surviving something enormous.
There are things I did because I needed to survive.
There are things I kept doing because they became easier than living.
I don’t think I need to hate myself for either one.
But I do need to start noticing the difference.
Because eventually self-preservation has to include preserving the parts of me that actually want to be alive in my own life.
Maybe that starts ridiculously small.
Wash your face.
Brush your teeth.
Eat something.
Drink some water.
Open the curtains.
Answer the text.
Walk outside.
Put the laundry in the dryer.
And when you’re ready, leave the house.
Not because suddenly everything is okay.
Not because depression disappeared.
Not because grief finished with me.
But because I am still here.
And there are tiny pieces of glitter showing up in places that used to be dark.
Whenever you are ready—
get up and go find them.
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