A long spell of feeling happy and successful, a person with a meaningful life and worthwhile work to do, has make me aware of how much pain I\u2019ve had in my life.\u00a0 It was a constant struggle to get through the day, to not fall apart, to not kill myself.\u00a0 To keep on going even when in the depths of despair, or badly disabled by terror.\u00a0 The therapist and nurse practitioner who helped me get on medication that worked both told me that most people who were as badly depressed as I was occasionally stayed in bed all day.\u00a0 For a lot of my life I felt like a person walking in a blizzard.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather lie down, I don\u2019t understand the reason for keeping going, but a voice inside me keeps saying \u201cNow put your right foot forward.\u00a0 Now put your left foot forward.\u201d\u00a0 I remember walking around the backyard at 3AM, chanting the Prajna Paramita, because I was too scared and upset to sleep (I didn\u2019t even know what it was about).\u00a0 I remember walking the basement corridors at Kripalu on another night when I couldn\u2019t sleep.\u00a0 Even in 2005, only 8 years ago, I was still struggling with despair and terror, still being very hard on myself.<\/p>\n
If I had been living in conditions of drought or war, I would have known that things were hard and all the people around me would have been struggling too.\u00a0 But because my wounds were invisible, no one could validate how hard it was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A long spell of feeling happy and successful, a person with a meaningful life and worthwhile work to do, has make me aware of how much pain I\u2019ve had in my life.\u00a0 It was a constant struggle to get through … Continue reading