Four of the most powerful words I’ve ever encountered, shamelessly taken, incidentally, from A Course in Miracles.
I look to the side where it says “What I’m Reading.” I haven’t updated it in, well, forever, since it’s been well over a year since I’ve read Heinlein. On one hand, I think of the things that have happened since then, how different things are; on the other, I think of how much has stayed the same.
Far too much.
I’m still reading, or rather, just started back reading, ACIM again. I’ve made great progress: I’m just starting chapter 5.
I’m struggling with dropping out of several things right now: a local group, a book group, perhaps even grad school. I’ve been vastly disappointed in the quality of the English program so far and very much doubting if I want to continue.
I could say the same thing about several aspects of my life right now.
The ugly side of silence, in my case, is that it often attempts to cover for or hide from depression. Growing up, whining was so not cool. So uncool that I have very little tolerance for it now. Emo is not cool. Self-pity is not cool. Whining is so not cool. So, when things are bad, I tend to shut up, turn off, and wait it out.
It’s the thing I talk around, disingenuously, ignore, look away from and generally pretend isn’t the hairy, stinky, yak taking up residence in my living room.
I thought it’d magically disappear. When I left my marriage, it would be gone. When I rid myself of irritatingly needy people, it would be gone. When I finished my Bachelor’s and didn’t have to struggle so hard, it would be gone. When Steve would finally go, it would be gone. When <insert event here> occurred, it would be finally, finally gone.
I have to laugh, perhaps a bit bitterly, at my naive thought that my life would be less busy when I finished my BA.
When the whir of activity is gone, I am left frozen, though. Buried in apathy as my dishes pile up, my books (with all the magic cures, don’t you know) pile up, unreturned phone calls pile up.
And I’m not just dysfunctional, but bordering on non-functional.
That’s where I am.
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, again and again, and expecting different results, then, theoretically, shaking things up just a little bit each day, theoretically, would be anything but insane.
Perhaps “This Need Not Be” is a good beginning.
Perhaps “this need not be” are four little words that, just maybe, might cause an interrupt in the processing of distress. In the silence of that moment of pause, anything can happen.
Tom Robbins said, “There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”
Perhaps it’s time to try the yum.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | depression
