30 Days - Restless

You think that it wouldn’t be so bad, the first time you hear about it, to be happy. To have your emotions lift you up, to keep you happy despite what happens to you. You think that she is over-complaining because you don’t understand.

What you don’t know, what she doesn’t tell you, what she can’t verbalize, could fill volumes.

It’s not happiness, not real happiness; it’s chemicals in the brain saying she should be happy even when she hits her hip on the table, even when she’s told that someone she loves has been hurt. Which is not to say that tragic things don’t make the mood drop, because they do, but it is about as much a drop as the temporary dip of a roller coaster.

It’s not happiness that leaves her relaxed and lax and languid. It’s happiness that boils and froths, agitated joy boiled over and over and over, spilling across the stove top. It’s the sound of her bones humming, the feel of them grinding, the sensation her skin may very well buzz away from her muscles.

It’s not restful, so it must be restless, and she would say yes yes that’s it. Restless. Because even when the night is quiet outside her windows at these times–especially when the night is quiet–she cannot make her mind stop racing, she cannot dam up the thoughts that spill and scatter across the floor of her mind, she cannot do a single thing.

But she can’t verbalize that, so she doesn’t tell you, and you. You think:

that doesn’t sound so bad.