Abyss Walking

Working at a medical center has its pluses and minuses. Every time I'm having a bad day, feeling sorry for myself, I simply walk across the courtyard of the medical plaza and I change my mind. You see everything you can imagine and things you never want to. The sick kids are the worst and the saddest have to be the folks hooked up to their IV poles dragging on a cigarette on the smoking porch.

My job entails tracking med school appointments and teaching hospital news, so from the clips I glean these headlines from I also read the reports on the latest research study. So I read the symptoms and do a lot of self-diagnosing - enough to be dangerous a doctor would probably say.


I've convinced that I have PMMD - a disorder that mainly effects me emotionally more than physically. Perhaps my male ob/gyn would laugh it off - but he has never sunk to the depths that I have - self-doubt, low self-worth, hostility, feeling unloved and unloveable and the hopeless blanket that weighs me down. It comes on quickly - something that normal wouldn't bother me makes me terribly irritable and I feel out of control. A simple comment is twisted and I inadvertently jump on an innocent person. Sometimes I panic, sometimes I can recognize it, but other times I feel as if an alien has invaded my body and I'm sure my family, friends and co-workers feel as if they have encountered a counter-culture sub-species. If my one gal pal isn't available to talk to I wait for her call to back because her calmness and patience with me seems to be the one thing that make me feel like I'm not crazy.

The dictionary defines an abyss, as "an immeasurably deep chasm, depth, or void." James Cameron even made a movie called "The Abyss" (pre-Titanic). An American nuclear submarine is attacked (during the cold war) and crashes underwater. A team of deep water divers from an oil rig are sent to examine it - what they encounter is terrifying. When I find myself in this bad place each month I feel as if I'm walking on the edge of an abyss that I could easily slip off of - but something holds me upright on the edge and when I'm there it is a very scary place to be in. When it's over I'm relieved, I feel safe.


Today, I felt the first breeze of fall on my face. It was a welcome touch but it also made me feel melancholy. Abyss walking only makes me want to disappear so no one will notice me. Make me invisible until I'm through feeling this way.