I’ve been feeling like a combination of the Dan Siegel material, the diagnosis of macular degeneration, and reading my early journals brought me to a place where I feel beyond redemption. \u00a0I think of this as the Pit, a deep well, too far down for light to penetrate, stone walls, a stone bottom. \u00a0I’ve been feeling extremely vulnerable, especially to unexpected happenings that demand something of me. \u00a0Here are some journal entries relating to being pulled down and what happened to me there.<\/p>\n
Wednesday, December 4
\nWhat I\u2019m in now doesn\u2019t feel like depression, I don\u2019t feel like I don\u2019t deserve to live, I don\u2019t feel like I have to do something to change the things that have gone wrong, but I want to do something to lift my spirits.\u00a0 <\/span>It occurred to me that I might start reading my beginning journals.<\/p>\nFriday, December 6
\nI read more of my journal yesterday.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m finding it very sad.\u00a0 <\/span>The writing is faintly hysterical.\u00a0 <\/span>I think I\u2019m trying to counteract depression with writing that\u2019s over poeticized \u2014 if that\u2019s the right word.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s more self-consciously poetic than actually poetic.\u00a0 <\/span>Very<\/span> adolescent.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve started work with a therapist, and I\u2019m trying to stop being so self-involved and get more interested in other people.\u00a0 <\/span>But I\u2019m hurt so easily and I\u2019ve been hurt so badly.<\/p>\nSaturday, December 7
\nI am badly thrown off by just finding out that the Adult Education Committee is going to meet this morning at 11 at a caf\u00e9 in Hanover. \u00a0I had planned to have a lazy morning.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0I feel so thrown off.<\/p>\nSunday, December 8
\nI am feeling totally disconnected.\u00a0 <\/span>Partly reading my journal \u2014 which may not be a good idea.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m seeing how disconnected I was from people, maybe that\u2019s triggered disconnect, along with the Dan Siegel information<\/a> about brain damage from neglect.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m also a little worried because the idea of ceremony<\/a> lifted me so high on Friday, and then I dropped so badly yesterday.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve been cutting back on the lamotrigine, and wonder if that\u2019s a problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nActually, the Dan Siegel material is not about “damage” but about failure to develop certain connections in the brain. \u00a0The fact that I call it “damage” shows that I’ve already been triggered.<\/p>\n
Lamotrigine is a medication that is supposed to smooth out the ups and downs.<\/p>\n
I felt so thrown off by learning about the committee meeting at the last minute.\u00a0 <\/span>I was worried about driving there.\u00a0 <\/span>I tried to meditate, I tried to just be with the discomfort, but it didn\u2019t settle or change.\u00a0 <\/span>Finally I started reading Parker Palmer\u2019s book<\/a> and that helped.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“A Hidden Wholeness” is the book we will be discussing in Quaker Meeting. \u00a0I am one of the co-leaders, and I suddenly felt very incompetent to lead any discussion group.\u00a0\u00a0I notice how badly my confidence in myself has fallen.<\/p>\n
In the afternoon I went to the memorial service for Faith Mattison.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>She was a very special person, loved by her family, did a lot of good in the world, never married or had kids.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m afraid it left me feeling like a useless blot on the surface of the earth.<\/p>\n
Monday, December 9
\nHeadache.\u00a0 <\/span>Discouraged and disconnected.\u00a0 <\/span>But Karen was a big help.\u00a0 <\/span>I no longer feel \u201cirredeemably bad,\u201d so I am finding my way out of this.\u00a0 <\/span>Yesterday, in Meeting \u2014 which was held here at Kendal \u2014 I remembered about \u201cthat of God within,\u201d and checked that space under my heart.\u00a0 <\/span>There was warmth there \u2014 not the blazing star I once found<\/a>, but enough warmth so I knew there was something not nothing.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I thought of all the other people who were feeling unredeemable, and I went down into the pit to sit with them.\u00a0 <\/span>That felt like the absolutely right thing to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nKaren is my therapist in Montpelier, who I’ve been seeing since the early 90’s. \u00a0I continue to see her once a month because she is an emotional anchor for me.<\/p>\n
I realized that feeling smashed beyond hope of recovery was the root of the desperate need to \u201cprove I deserve to live<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other reason I\u2019m feeling so vulnerable, so expecting to be rejected or ignored, is because of reading my early journal.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m just at the time when I smashed David\u2019s windows<\/a> and was hospitalized.\u00a0 <\/span>Sitting with the other unredeemable\/disposables in the Pit is like sitting with my younger self, desperate for connection and yet terrified of reaching out.<\/p>\n
Tuesday, December 10
\n<\/span>I woke up feeling very cold emotionally, with images of Robert and Jim killing the professors<\/a>.\u00a0 Then I start to be afraid that I\u2019m possessed.\u00a0 Then I think about Jenny and her painful journals, and her painful journey, and I see that she\u2019s not possessed, just badly hurt.\u00a0 I really want to get to grief group today, I feel connected and at home there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\ntoday:
\nI buckled down and worked on the blog post about the turnaround in the Pit.\u00a0 <\/span>It seems so astonishing, it felt like I was there for weeks, but it was less than 24 hours.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s true I wasn\u2019t there very long because first I thought of all the other people who felt that unredeemable, and then I remembered Younger Jenny who\u2019d written the journal that triggered me.\u00a0 <\/span>When I sat beside that Jenny, I was prepared to just be with her for weeks.\u00a0 <\/span>I didn\u2019t try to do anything, I didn\u2019t try to help her, just reassured her I\u2019d stay with her, but help showed up all over the place \u2014 the David Whyte CD, grief group, Erica, Richard Rohr\u2019s daily meditations\u2014 this week on the first steps of AA\u2019s program, the stones of Callanish…\u00a0 <\/span>I never thought of the natural world as being friendly support, but it was to Nature I went as a troubled teen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve been feeling like a combination of the Dan Siegel material, the diagnosis of macular degeneration, and reading my early journals brought me to a place where I feel beyond redemption. \u00a0I think of this as the Pit, a deep … Continue reading