trekking stubborn through this season of fatigue

When I was younger, I always assumed some good or great or inspired thing was coming. Maybe just happiness, but more likely something creative. 

It took Autism and the failure of my marriage and my more developed awareness of my limitations to realise that it doesn't work like that. People can grow into something good, or not. But mostly you have to make it happen. Or at least attract it. 

I plod on, one foot in front of the other, with much resistance and dawdling. I get through each day, with minimum, mediocre effort. I make do, I get by, and the days are the same every day. I look forward to the end of the working day, the weekend. And my children grow so fast, C in her suspended, painful bubble, D towards something hopeful, tenderly and anxiously, uncertainly. Birthdays and Christmases fly around again, they gain height, I gain weight, and grey, greying hair. 

I fear going forward - around the corner of my consciousness is the ever-present awareness of the grief that could be waiting - I am still flailing around in the backwash of the grief that was waiting, why not a second wave? We are so vulnerable, I have not yet discovered the secret of resilience. What if it strikes again? There are so many ways to hurt. 

Stagnation makes it harder to imagine change - you need to gather energy for a forward fling, but the plodding is surprisingly tiring work. It leaves so little space for creativity, for confidence, for mustering momentum. I suspect the answer to this lies in Newtonian physics and the principal of inertia, though the suggestion that it all comes down to mass makes me worry the answer lies in dieting. Look at this, physics is calling me out: 

Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity. This includes changes to the object's speed, or direction of motion. An aspect of this property is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant speed, when no forces act upon them.

Inertia comes from the Latin word, iners, meaning idle, sluggish. Inertia is one of the primary manifestations of mass, which is a quantitative property of physical systems. Isaac Newton defined inertia as his first law in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which states:

The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.^[1]

We're just waiting for the apple to fall, it seems. And change our trajectory. Or our directionlessness. 

I came across a remedy of a kind for TMJ issues, while looking something else up, the other week, and was struck by its description - it's one of those things that brings about de-stagnation for people who are stuck in a rut - it came with a warning that the changes may not be what you expect. It described my needs so exactly I bought it, despite the fear of being jolted uncomfortably out of complacency. I'm not setting any stock in it, but the idea of change taking shape around me without me having to actually *do* anything to effect it appeals. As long as I'm not missing anything dire in the dire warning of unexpected changes, to go back to my ... fourth paragraph. Aii. 

My title comes from this beloved Plath poem - the rhythm is perfect. I'm not claiming her brilliance, her muse, or her blackness, thankfully, but I do love that line. And the rest of it.