My husband took all the kids to Carter’s basketball practice and to get some food so I could have some time alone. I thought I’d clean, yet, I find myself typing into a computer that has come to know me so well.

The things this laptop could say. The confessions I’ve made to people I’ve never met. The sadness that I hold and let out in tiny bits as to not overwhelm, but just enough to keep whatever grasp on sanity I have left.

Life is hard. I do not have the market cornered on sorrow, as I am reminded of often. Being a part of the Down syndrome community is amazing, but it also lends itself to the grim reminders of the fragility of our children, the fear that lurks around every cold, every fever, every sleepless night. Another life lost too soon, and there’s no way to exist in this community without that reminder.

“Death is at your doorstep. It will steal your innocence. It will not steal your substance”- Mumford and Sons

My substance. What am I made of, anyways? Life has found a way to test my resolve, to strengthen my spine, to bruise my knees. And now, as I teeter on the threshold of the great depressive abyss I find myself falling into all too often, I hear the words of too many echo in my brain:

No. I will not. Too many times I feel myself being dragged down and I loosen my grip on the ground that I grasp as my only ally. I give in before I fight. Too many times I give every bit of fight I have to battles that are not my own. This time, I will fight.

I will not lay down and, in the words of Dylan Thomas, “go gently into that good night.” Sure, that poem wasn’t about depression, but I feel like it applies. I feel like depression robs me of the light I have in my life.

So now I rage. I fight. I will do whatever it takes to be FINE. I have too much to give to be robbed of my substance. I have too much to say to be robbed of my words.

and, quite frankly, I have too much to do to be sad.