I looked up at the mountain as I came home today.  I’ve driven this road a hundred times in the last six months and haven’t given it even a moment of thought.  So knowing that what properly functioning  people do is notice, I somehow slowed the whirring gears of my mentally ill brain enough to see that the leaves are gone.  Wooden skeleton trees stand frozen waiting for the heavy snow to adorn their naked limbs; Less showy than their previous blazing jewelry but still a delicate sort of beauty.

Mount Hanley (our tiny Nova Scotia community) is still the place it was six months ago as well.  Everything carried on without me; the world not requiring my sanity, my work or my involvement.  My children grew despite my hollowness.  They smiled and ate; played and worked.  I wonder if they saw me pretending to live or if they were fooled by me too.  Lola, the masterful charlatan.

We eat supper with our neighbors a lot.  When they go home I crawl into bed and wonder if tomorrow I will be me again.  Yet?  Ever? Did I fool them too? The dog barks at the barn into the pitch black and if an animal intruder is suspected it certainly isn’t apprehended by our fine hound.  “All bark” as they say.   When I wake in the morning I feel the early winter sun on my face and for a glorious thirty seconds my brain doesn’t remember that it’s still crazy.  It just smells the morning and hears the yawns and whispers of children in far off rooms.  Children who need me less than they did out of the necessity of survival.  When the jittery darkness falls on me again I wear it like an uncomfortable coat.  I can’t take it off because it’s too cold outside.  I’m just a skeleton tree waiting for the snow.  I will be cold but delicately beautiful and less showy than before…