Imagine a straight line, like the horizon perhaps, something fixed horizontally. It represents the division, the thin line, between happiness and misery. Living on the line is unchanging, level, sure, and consistent. Living on the line means living in an ordinary state, a normal state if you will. Typically, this line is the partition between two drastically opposite sectors of emotion.

Becoming aware of my own mental atmosphere and the analogy of the line as it relates to my emotions describes well the theory I set forth. Devoid of my own high and low emotions, any existence other than what I have known would be stability in disarray.

As a child, I knew nothing about lines or degrees of mood. Like my parents, I had my own undercurrent of melancholy, but life was a balancing act. Children are simply expected to be happy, but at a young age I found myself teetering near but mostly somewhere below the line.

As I grew, life was a mixed bag of highs and lows. There is a fine line between each degree away from the line. If the horizon represents level emotion, above it might represent beauty, joy, warmth, happiness, pleasure, excitement, exhilaration, euphoria, ecstasy, and more. These are emotions of mental preference, emotions of desire. But like my parents, the undercurrent of the opposite filled my mood. Sadly, the farther below the line one falls the closer sadness, discouragement, loneliness, misery, and anguish become.

In childhood, the awfulness of mental manipulation is not understood and therefore cannot be dealt with in a manner that releases its sufferers from its grasp. Unfortunately, my adulthood did not differ from my childhood. I did not recognize the situations I encountered and the degree to which they affected me. But they produced symptoms that should have been an indication, and the warning signs that went unattended provided for instability and my own self-medicating. In other words, there were periods when I used drugs as a method of self-medication, as a coping mechanism, never realizing that my mind was teetering on that fine line at the exact time. Falling below the line, which I did regularly, meant struggling with sadness, hopelessness, and a desire for isolation, any of which could mean the beginning of depression.

I have found that falling lower and lower into the well of life is an empty and worthless journey in which exhaustion quickly is felt. Lower still lay despair, panic, and sometimes even paralysis. This depression and overall sickness oblige the contemplation of suicide, albeit by despair or obsession.

Although some may argue that living below the line is occasionally cathartic, I would submit that it is a slippery slope to the underground. It may very well be a race against time to prevent the earthly silencing of one's soul.

I have apologized to my husband many times because living below the line has not only affected me; it has affected our entire family. My siblings, daughters, and I are very accustomed to parental volatility, but it takes some getting used to. Although my own upbringing lacked family unity, it was my heartfelt desire to avoid any resemblance of my past. The circle that lacked emotion, devotion, and allegiance should not have been my legacy, and my ancestors would expect no less than for me to do my best to overcome it.

It is my feeling that, exclusive of some genetic disorder or mental incapacity, children who are raised with love, even in the worst of circumstances, surrounded by a minimally positive environment, have a reasonable chance of living above the line. Hooray!

In my topsy-turvy world, the lack of nurturing, warmth, and family support invited the mayhem that was bewildering, but I survived by necessity. I learned to smile and I learned to be accommodating. This was my sustenance; it showed that my spirit was intact and it kept me from sinking.

My father encouraged me to be kindhearted. I perceived him as that and it gave me delight to mimic him. My childhood could have been worse. In every place, at every stage, I have had plentiful moments. We were a typical middle-class family. My father made a good living and as the "baby," I wanted for nothing. So mine has not been living on the foul line or the firing line, often just below the line and sometimes above the line and even when I had to draw the line and fall in line, it has not been the end of the line.

Not yet.

(Excerpt from Life is Like a Line by Cynthia M. Sabotka and reprinted with permission from the author).