I got through a few of them over the course of a week or so, and some of them were good and some weren't, but all of them were interesting in some way.
And then one night I went into the kitchen, and reached for a liquor bottle instead of a wine bottle. I had had a rough day and just didn't feel like I had it in me to give a bottle of wine the attention and focus that it deserved. My days had been getting rougher with more frequency over the period of a few weeks, and I thought maybe unwinding with some brandy would help me recharge my batteries a little bit and I could come at the wine fresh the next day.
The next day was worse. It wasn't that bad things were happening to me during the day, it's just that I felt kind of awful for a higher and higher percentage of each day. That night I bypassed the wine again and went back into the liquor cabinet. Tomorrow's another day.
But it wasn't, or at least it wasn't in any positive sense. And neither were any of the ones that followed it. Every day the amount of time I felt OK versus the amount of time I felt awful shifted a little bit more to the awful side. The bad stretches got longer and longer until at some point that's all there was.
My appetite was gone. I was sleeping poorly when I slept. None of the things I had previously enjoyed doing seemed worth doing anymore. I felt terrible about everything all the time. All I wanted to do was kill time as quickly as possible until I could go to sleep again.
I'm not a stranger to depression. I've lived with it off and on for as long as I can remember. Most of the time, the downs are just a little down and don't last very long. This was a big one. Is a big one.
It fills up everything. It gets into your senses and changes how everything looks and feels and tastes. It gets inside you and spreads out until it's covering everything, and it somehow continues to grow until it feels like it must start to leak out of your pores any day now.
It takes away the things you love and your drive by removing your capacity to love and your capacity for action. It's a grief with no cause and a pain with no source or location. Nothing makes it better. Nothing makes it go away. You wake up in the morning and it's waiting for you at the foot of your bed. And somehow it's gotten bigger in the night, and it grabs you a little harder every day.
So, this project, and many others, have gone on the back burner. I can't think about anything but this right now. I'm using all my energy to get from one day to the next. Right now, I believe that it will eventually get tired of me and move along. That's the only thing I know I have to hold onto no matter what.
I started this project a few years ago in an attempt to occupy myself during another particularly nasty time in my life. It was interesting and it engaged me and I learned a lot of really cool things in the process. Those wines and this site helped me get back on balance at a time when I was in danger of losing control. Wine has helped stabilize me at several different times in my life.
I don't know if it's eventually going to be the answer this time, but it's not the answer right now.
So that's why there hasn't been anything new here. And why there may not be for awhile. I really hope it's temporary and I'll have the energy and ability to continue with this very soon. I don't know how soon. I don't know if ever.
Thanks to everyone for reading. I hope you'll hear from me before too long.