I’ve been fighting a seriously dark melancholy the past few days and am struggling to stay sane. Yesterday, I cut the yard and worked up a good sweat out in the heat. I had to do something to get myself out of this depression. I was born depressed, and to just not feel down for one day is so wonderful, I cannot explain it.

After doing three hours of yard work, I sat outside in a chair because I couldn’t take being in the house. The crisp blue sky, the brilliant sunshine, the smell of fresh cut grass – nothing seemed to help me smile – not even for a second. It’s like fighting an endless war, over and over and over.

I am allergic to wasps and normally freak out when they get near me. While sitting there with sun rays pouring on my skin, a  yellow and black striped wasp landed on my arm. I didn’t even flinch – I sat there motionless letting it crawl on me. Soon after, dozens of others started buzzing around me. I didn’t move. I just watched them. Eventually, I had seven wasps on my arm. They seemed to be drinking the sweat from my skin.

yellow jacket

I thought about how insignificant they were to my state of sadness. I envisioned how my depression worked. It’s like walking through a snow blizzard across a frozen sea – all alone. So alone, no matter how loud you scream, no one would hear you anyway. You tread forward because you have to. Sitting still is suicide, so you march on. Suddenly, you step on thin ice. Cracks appear and you know you’re going under, but you know there’s noting you can do.

You fall into the water and are carried off by a powerful current. The hole disappears and inside your heart and mind, you know you will suffocate and die any second, but you don’t. You stay alive, trapped beneath a vast sheet of endless ice. You’re stuck in a type of purgatory and overcome by perpetual dread.

After daydreaming about this icy horror for a few minutes, I had thirteen wasps on my arm and a few in my hair. I felt like I was dreaming, but was wide awake. I couldn’t believe what I saw – armies of huge dragonflies – a swirling horde in my front yard. There were still some wasps buzzing around and the dragonflies were attacking them. Is that normal? I had no idea that dragonflies attacked wasps.

I rose from my chair as if in a trance and walked onto the grass. I extended my arm straight, yellow jackets still crawling on it. Immediately, the dragonflies circled me in a maddening frenzy. They violently dive bombed at the wasps, scooping them from my skin with surgical precision. I was bewildered and stunned by this occurrence. One black dragonfly swooped down and hit a wasp so hard, it ripped the thing into pieces. I actually saw it’s head and a few legs fall to the ground – the dragonfly barely grazed my skin.

The entire event only lasted around thirty seconds, and my dragonfly friends removed every wasp from my arm. There were at least a hundred or more dragonflies all around me. They encircled my body but never once landed on me. I have never even heard about something like this happening, and I still wonder if I was dreaming while standing there.

It’s so strange. The wasps never stung me and the dragonflies were like dolphins protecting a swimmer from sharks. It must have been real, because there were hundreds of dragonflies whirling around my yard again today – a cyclonic vortex of buzzing bodies. They gathered around me again, though I had no wasps to offer them for sacrifice. The amazing ordeal made me smile and I really needed it.

Image from wikipedia – yellow jacket