Winter Journal: Space, Frame, Leverage

The late winter world outside my window lies brown and still—bloodless and motionless.
Dark thoughts gather like storm clouds as I sit in my wheelchair, unmoving. They spiral tighter: why me, failing hands that once held children, each breath shorter than the last, one final dream of salt water against my skin – hopeless, trapped in these three rooms, her silence, money, the disease’s relentless march, why continue, too weak – even for suicide.

Their weight presses down on my chest. Each breath becomes a battle against an invisible, crushing force. Anxiety and depression settle in with winter’s patience, wearing me down, waiting to choke the light from my eyes.

Then, I remember something from another life.

In healthier days, I studied Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, an art developed by a small, elderly man who made his name wrestling giants. Beyond its endless techniques lie three essential principles: space, frame, and leverage.

Pinned on my back beneath a larger opponent, these principles offered escape. A slight turn of the hips creates space to move where none existed. His sprawled limbs frame his body on top of me like table legs, but trap one ankle and pull his wrist close on the same side, and the physics shift. Buck my hips upwards and toward his trapped limbs, and his unbalanced weight betrays him. An elbow wedged against his hip becomes a frame of unyielding bone, preventing recovery. His mass flows like water, and with the certainty of the tide, our positions reverse.

Now, the opponent wears no face, but those same principles still balance the fight when darkness pins me down.

Space comes first. These spinning thoughts crush, crowd, paralyze, and panic. Instead of resisting, I watch them pass: fear, doubt, despair. I name each one, and in naming, I find a breath of distance.

Next comes framing. The mind wanders, lost in shadow-lands of futures that never come and pasts that never return. Stories of what might be and what might have been. Fictions. Reality lives only in this heartbeat—the drip of a faucet, dust motes spinning in kitchen window sunlight, a breeze dancing in the treetops, the scent of your own skin. So, I plant my attention here, framing my mind on the reality of this present moment’s solid ground.

Finally, leverage. Each dawn, I search for small wonders: morning light painting the valley gold, a chickadee’s fearless song piercing winter’s silence, the perfect spiral of a sleeping cat. Dark thoughts cannot hold their grip against a mountain of gratitude for such ordinary miracles. After all, we ride a sphere of rock and water spinning through space around an ancient fire, while billions of other fires burn in the vast dark. What terror can endure before such wonder?

This wrestling seems endless. Sometimes, darkness pins me down, helpless with my back on the floor, my heart racing against my ribs. But then I remember—space, frame, leverage—and escape once again.