April 5. Day 95. It's a fine line

There is a fine line, sometimes a very fine line between coping and not coping; between sanity and insanity. It is a line I feel I hover uncomfortably close to much of the time but somehow I manage to stay air-borne and not crash into the ground without the benefit of a cushioning mat.  Staying in a hovering position is uncomfortably difficult what with gravity being what it is and I fully admit I would not do it alone. No, like the Beatles I get by with a little help from my friends. It is pretty clear the "friends" the Beatles were talking about were of a chemical nature and I'm not ashamed to say some of mine are too. Yep, anti-depressants are a wonderful thing, mostly, sort of. Well, at least better than the alternative. But my get-by list also includes family and friends of the human kind. The person who listens, or shares a drink or a meal (or makes a drink or a meal) that person is gold. I have lots of golden people in my life. They know who they are and I love them all. Of course not all my friends are human. No matter how mad I am, the fur friend(s) are there with a wagging tail and an eager pant desperate for my company and for a walk. If that doesn't lift a girl's spirit nothing would. Those dogs have no words but know exactly what to say. Today, they dragged me to Musgrave Park where Saturday means it was slacklining day. There the metaphor of staying afloat was being played out and pretty much the same rules applied. With each stumble and crash there was someone there with a hand or an encouraging word pulling each participant up and urging them to get back into the game and cheering them on when they did. You won't be getting any tricky manouevres from me for some time but at least I think I've got the ingredients right. If only other aspects of life came with a nice thick padded mat to break the fall ...  it is, after all, a fine, fine line between pleasure and pain as well. Walk carefully my friends.