The Tree of Melancholia

sometimes i am walking through the day and a flash of awareness grips me, and i am shocked to find that this is my life. suddenly it feels foreign and strange. my mind drifts and i find the broken and crippled bodies of women in the soft-textured pile of my sage towels-- or the twisted gracefulness of dancers in the curves of the printed peonies on my bathroom wallpaper. i stop to think-- am i happy here in this place i find myself? i usually answer "yes" to comfort myself and keep from letting the fear that i've so soon failed in my mission to "be better" creep into my thoughts and fester like flowers that stay in water long after they die. that is my worry. to fester and not grow.
looking out the window, my world is beautiful and bountiful, but it is the garden of my spirit that needs constant tending; long ago i planted a tree named melancholia and fell in love with its delicately, sad beauty. in time, my tree bore the strange and bitter fruit of malaise. the branches, heavy with fetid issue, polluted the air. and so, with bare hands i am now digging up the roots that have clung to the earth for so long. my exquisitely tragic tree suits me no more. the irony--i have outgrown the romantic illusion that sprouted in my soul and smothered my progress.