The Black

I could tell you it comes without warning, but I’d be a liar.

I mean, it’s not obvious enough that I can mark a day on the calendar with “You are just gonna be fucked for a while, so get your affairs in order,” but I do know in certain ways that it’s coming. I usually don’t listen right away, though.

Because you don’t want to listen about that, do you?

Things I do know:

~The Black strikes every four to five years. I can’t predict the season but the year? Certainty.

~The Black tastes metallic. That’s how I know it’s coming. At first I think it’s a little funny, because I think of all the Paltrows and the Garners throwing kale and apples into their Vitamix in the morning, but for me? Let’s throw in seven handfuls of pennies, grind then up and then make you suck on them for a couple of days. What kind of strange alchemy is at work here, that you can taste impending suckery? But I can. Pennies in my mouth. And then I know.

~When I try to describe what I’m feeling, when I finally admit I’m there, I instinctively reach back behind myself and grab my shoulders, and then claw my way up. It’s a creeper, The Black. This is something that I will never understand, because normally I feel things deep in the gut, but The Black starts in my spine, then settles in my shoulders, and then in a day or so, it’s in my brain.

~Then comes the worst part. You have to wave the flag. It will inconvenience the people who depend on you, who think you are the steady. The given. The car that’s always at pickup. Sorry, upended. Nothing feels good about that, but then again, nothing feels good.

~”Do you need to go somewhere?”

~Sleep for two days. Or three. Or maybe you go somewhere.

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THE WHEEL OF FUCKERY

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It is kind of a joke, but not really.

The Wheel of Fuckery goes from 1-10. When you start to dig your way out of the dark, you rate yourself on the fuck-o-meter.

By now, my husband knows enough just to pull me close and say, “Today?”

I try to exhale. “I’m a six, buddy.”

I’ll take a six.