I’ve been struggling with depression for about a month. It’s the first time I’ve been depressed in a long time. This is what I wrote this morning.
Woke up terrified with a bad headache. I haven’t had this hard a time in a long time. I remember the feelings from the past. I took Mocha to Collman’s and walked along the river and felt frozen dread the whole time. I wasn’t able to enjoy or even be present for the beauty of the trees and the river. In the years after 1984, I forced myself to walk our dog Shenanigan on the Wilderness Trail with this same feeling of frozen dread.
I’ve been having odd confusions of temperature, feeling both hot and cold at the same time. Very uncomfortable. I’m trying to hold the fear, the headache (nails driven in) and the discomfort with compassion. O yes, the hot and cold together is what I would experience when I had really bad cramps.
Lynelle left for Rhode Island last night. It was sudden, I didn’t get to say goodbye. That may be part of this fear, I’m all alone in the house.
I’ve been typing up from May 28, the time when, feeling strong from my “extraordinary” healing, I went back and read my journal for the time of Fred and David in the late 60’s. I thought I was strong enough, but I see now that was a mistake. I think part of the trouble I’ve been having is because of having revisited that painful time. I talk about the letters I wrote to David from the hospital and how I would be ashamed to read them to Karen. I don’t even mention Erica. Ashamed. I’ve been ashamed of how I am now too, both the not being able to function (according to the world) and the not being able to be present which is what I do want.
I have thought that having to revisit this material after coming to a new place of strength is giving me a chance to work through it. I was going to say “again” but now I see that I never did really work through it. In my journal for May 28 I say “This is the work for now” and how I want to go to Jenny in the hospital and try to comfort her. Then I guess I got distracted by email, Mocha, etc.
The sun has come out. The contrasts are painful. The light is sparkling on the faucet and the spoons & forks in the dish drainer, and it just makes me want to hide. The house doesn’t seem familiar, doesn’t seem to be mine, and when I walked around the yard yesterday evening it didn’t seem familiar either. In “Darkness Before Dawn” there are a couple of essays on depression from a Buddhist perspective. They say depression is very close to enlightenment because all of the things of the world don’t have any meaning. They are “samsara” – “illusion.” When I was outside I tried to see the trees as illusions, but couldn’t. Just felt the painful cold of not being at home anywhere. If it’s all unreal, then my pain is unreal which just makes it worse.
Fresh green leaves moving in the breeze, and they might just as well be a movie. A movie would be easier to watch. I think of Parker Palmer hiding in the corner with the shades down. I think of the woman who lives with the depressed man, loves him, takes care of him, finds compassion for everything. I don’t think she’s co-dependent, I think she’s amazingly loving. She keeps saying to him “You’re worth it.” I think of Dana stopping cooking for me because it wasn’t “fun” anymore, and worrying that he was “enabling” me. There’s a lot of pain there. He really let me down.
I have been asking for God’s help over and over, and I suddenly realized that typing up those passages — way early according to my habit of typing what I wrote a month ago — revisiting that old material is where the work is now. That was what I’ve been wanting from God — though I wasn’t able to make it explicit — but I wanted to be shown how I was supposed to work on myself, what was the process, the next step? I realize I’ve been so confused and lost because I couldn’t see what to do next.