ill winds and nothing else

If I had anything new to say, anything exciting, anything positive or optimistic, I would have written sooner.
My reluctance to write is inevitably a reflection of my sorry state of mind. This first month of the new year has so far brought me nothing but physical anguish and psychological angst.
Is "angst" passe? I doubt if it's ever used any more. I'm wallowing in mostly misery and abundant self-pity.

I'm exhausted, depressed, anxious, tense, stressed out. I have sporadic panic attacks and persistant PVC's (premature ventricular contractions). I keep expecting my heart to give out......

......and suddenly I'll awaken in the tender arms of consoling angels......or more likely in a searing pyre of flames and the sting of pitchforks......

There is only one way to describe my life as it presently is: rotten.
Rotten weather, rotten health, rotten neighbors, rotten realtor, rotten environment....ad infinitum.

And the wind......the relentless West Texas wind that obscures any semblance of reality and eradicates any smidgen of hope. The winds have been blowing all week, one suffocating duststorm after another, over and over in a hopeless cycle of dust and destruction. No snow. No rain. Only thick brown dust.

The sun valiantly appears at dawn in the promise of a blue sky, but by mid-morning the air becomes dusted, the sky turns amber, the sun dims into an eerie eclipse. By noon the sky is nothing more than a brown, smouldering shroud. The afternoon quickly fades into a sightless fog of filthy dust and an evil wail of demon voices. Blinding dirt, choking dust, the incessant screams of devastating winds.

A wild, West Texas ghost symphony that plays itself out on the endless echoes of the open plains.

I hear it in my sleep at night, it haunts my dreams and inspires my nightmares. It awakens me suddenly in the timid hours just before dawn. I sit up in bed in the midst of a cold, black room, listening to the outside havoc: banging shutters, rattling windows, snapping branches.

Inside, I hear the pounding of my heart, the ticking of the clock, the purring of the cat who is snuggled cozily by my side.

And then I lay back down and pull up the covers - trying to get warm, trying to ignore the threatening, taunting wail of the phantom wind. Trying to remember if I'm still alive or if I am merely the remnant of a lost ghost passing through the West Texas night.

Trying to say some semblance of a prayer that might help me get through another day.......