From my journal for January 8, 1996
What’s being most discouraging at the present moment is having no positive feelings — I can’t remember what it was like to feel love. There’s not even a clear pain, like grief or sorrow, there’s just discomfort, vague fear, isolation.
I tried to tell myself that this is just a stage I’m moving through. But it’s hard to accept when it feels so forever. And I see that again I’m up against the belief that if I don’t know what to do to make it change, nothing will change.
The only things I can think of that I know would help if I could do them more are more exercise outdoors (though I’m often too sick) and more yoga. I think if I could do an hour of yoga a day it would make a big difference. But I find that just too hard emotionally, too hard to spend that much time with my body without the moral support of other people.
At this point I have no idea that I’m dealing with clinical depression and trauma. My difficulty with trying to do yoga without a class for support is because I can’t regulate my nervous system by myself and need other people around.
From my journal for January 9
Dog woke me at 3:30, Dana got up to let her out, I had to take Nuprin to be able to sleep again. This morning I feel physically uncomfortable, mentally despairing, and completely without any redeeming emotions, I have no sense of a heart or a soul. What would a “redeeming emotion” be? Some sense of love, for myself or another or a cause, some sense of grief, for the losses that have left me in this place of despair. Anger would bring warmth, possibly hope — anger would mean there was something in here worth fighting for? I suppose there is fear — not a redeeming emotion — the cold fear that this will never change. That seems to be where I am at the moment.
I remind myself that this is/must be a stage that I’m passing through. I say to myself Karen’s phrase “that’s the fear.” Nothing changes the discomfort in my body, the cold isolation in my mind, the emotional emptiness. There’s that horrible sense of having gotten down to the “real truth” which is the decay of the body and the isolation of the psyche. All those notions that give meaning to life: that I’m here for a purpose, that I’m connected to other human beings, that there is a spiritual realm that I participate in — these all seem like the wispiest of foolish fantasies. Well, I see that this place is a pretty good equivalent of hell — that frozen place where there is no meaning and no hope for the future. Paradoxically, this makes me feel better. This place has a name, it’s part of the Buddhist cosmology, just one of the “six worlds” that we cycle through. It has a familiarity, it reminds me of the cold despair of February 1971. I got out of that one, perhaps I’ll come out of this one.
I think part of recognizing the Buddhist concept of “Hell” as helpful is knowing that other people have felt like I do, I’m not completely alone. Given that I was traumatized by being left alone, being able to feel connected with other people who feel like I do is a big help.