Thoughts are scurrying, scattered, fleeing, like writhing little rodents. I try to calm them, appease them, bribe them but they won't rest. They keep on going and going and going into frantic dismay. Revolt! Depression. I'm tired all the time, from the fighting and the effort. I wish for peace. Not for the abyss but for the calm of life without concern.
For a moment one of the gems I cherish falls into my hand. I hold it close to my heart and it warms me through. The frost around the edges stings that little bit less. The day is minutely less scary, in their presence, when I'm not alone and their sturdy beauty encapsulates my focus. The thoughts align like the rigid carbon I imagine them to be made from. One day the gem will shatter. One day it will be dust between my fingers, or lost, misplaced or out of reach. I will push that day away in desperate hope that it will not return.
But it will. It does. And I start again.