things of the heart

The office thermostat reads 74 degrees.

I am wearing long underwear, jeans, a t-shirt, a sweater over the t-shirt, a thick knit scarf, and my jacket. 

I am so cold.

I curl my fingers around my coffee mug, desperately trying to warm them. My boss laughs. "Staying warm enough?" He teases me. 

Cold is a color, and that color is the palest of blues. 

This afternoon I will go back to the ED treatment center so they can attach tiny electrodes all over my body and watch my heart beat beat beat. I've never had an EKG reading and I am both fascinated and terrified of what secrets my heart will tell us.

Will it reveal that the room spins every time I stand up? Or confess about the pain that occasionally stabs beneath my breastbone? 

I was supposed to meet Bill yesterday in a second attempt for tea. He sent me an email in the morning apologizing for having to cancel again. It hit me harder than I expected. I've been really needing to talk with him. To just sit with him and know he understands. 

Emotion has been slowly creeping back into my chest, into my bones, into my brain. I was so frightened when it was gone, when I felt nothing. Now it's return has frightened me all over again. 

"On a scale of 1 to 10, I am a marble statue in the ruins of a sunken ship, looking in vain for faint strains of sunlight in the dark water." I told Bill in an email. 

He sent me back a beautiful picture of a lone diver in the deep sea, surrounded by the vibrantly dark blue water.

Depression is a color, and that color is the darkest of blues.

I ate things like pizza (1 slice) and a grilled cheese sandwich (whole wheat bread, lowest calorie cheese) this weekend. If I had to do the stereotypical ED treatment exercise and draw how I view my body, I would draw a hippopotamus. 

When I was a child, I used to look up at a telephone wire and spin and spin and spin until I was so dizzy, I fell down. Then I would lay there in the damp grass, laughing, as the world continued to whirl around me even though I was completely still. 

I feel like that now. The world is whirling. Am I going forwards or backwards? I don't know.

Maybe my heart will tell us.