(Written in November 2004)
Woke feeling bleak. Hard to get out of bed. Dizzy at first. Feeling very low in my heart. Thinking that death would be a relief, it’s just too hard to live. And yet there’s nothing particularly difficult right now except worry about Bella. Nothing I ‘have to’ do. But it’s just the most ordinary things: shopping, fixing meals, cleaning house that are the hardest to do when I feel this bleak and tired and sick. Where is my courage? It helps when I hear David Whyte say that life IS difficult.
Feeling very meaningless — why am I going on, cooking and eating? It’s very bright outside, clear and sunny, snow sparkling. I think I find it less painful to feel bleak when it’s bleak outside. The brightness frightens me — seems to be calling me out into the cold, out to fresh air and adventure, when all I want to do is crawl into a cave and hide.
I did have an image which felt helpful somehow — of myself as a shaman swimming down into the depths of water beneath the ice. So if one part of me is in this deep place I can’t expect to do much more than stay alive up here on the surface.
Although part of me is frantic that I’m not making myself: clean the floor, walk the dog, work on art, and is afraid that I’ll just go downhill, another part — the one that sees the shaman journeying under water — knows that this is something I’m moving through. Another test, another threshold of something to be let go of, another incubation in darkness and silence — I haven’t a clue what new thing might be getting ready to birth — but I think lying low and treating myself as an invalid is the way to go.