Surely this love will manifest
The kind of depression I've been experiencing the last two weeks isn't so much about the thoughts and feelings I have, but about how I secondarily judge those thoughts and feelings. I don't think the primary thoughts have changed much, but instead of finding joy, or at least hope, in those thoughts, my mind jumps directly into disgust and ugliness.
No matter what the evidence, the easiest thing for my mind to conclude, in its present state, is: "how pathetic".
I have a dream or aspiration that three weeks ago would have made me smile, and now I'm thinking "stupid fucking pipe dream. You'll never do it, and you're just engaging in pathetic mental masturbation to make yourself feel better".
The good thing is that I don't fully believe any of those judgements. The bad thing is that for two weeks I put my life on hold indulging in them. Fuck friends, fuck comitments, fuck skating, fuck jiu-jitsu, fuck life. Fuck being beautiful, because I feel ugly, and if I feel ugly, then that's what I must be.
The good news again is that I came out of it relatively easily. The bad news is that it happened at all. I thought I'd kicked it. I thought that a day or two at most was as much as I'd let my mind float around the depressive attractor before switching back into a more skillful state of mind.
Perhaps it's all progress. Perhaps it's just the aftermath of all the rage I'd been carrying with me lately.
Meditation seems to help at least as much as antidepressants ever did, and lovely NYC offers me a group sit to attend almost every evening of the week.
My friends have taught me to dumpster-dive (opening a produce bin in front of Whole Foods is an obvious enough skill, but one does need to be taught that it's an OK thing to do, since we've been taught ever since childhood that the only way to feel good is to buy something).
The prevailing circuitry in my brain is telling me I ought to feel digusted with myself. Something else in me, perhaps we can call it my heart, dissagrees. My heart says I should feel compassion and love for that curled-up-in-a-ball persona, but that I should also love the things outside it: the singing of a skate's blade on the ice, the warmth of a firend's hug, the intricacies that allow a plant to grow, the claw-scrapings of a leopard on a tree, the point of a dancer's toe in sillhouete at Alvin Ailey. Surely if I can love these things as dearly as I do, I can't, in any sense of the word, be pathetic. Surely I am lovely and alive and in love with that life? Surely this love will fucking manifest into my being someone worth being.
No matter what the evidence, the easiest thing for my mind to conclude, in its present state, is: "how pathetic".
I have a dream or aspiration that three weeks ago would have made me smile, and now I'm thinking "stupid fucking pipe dream. You'll never do it, and you're just engaging in pathetic mental masturbation to make yourself feel better".
The good thing is that I don't fully believe any of those judgements. The bad thing is that for two weeks I put my life on hold indulging in them. Fuck friends, fuck comitments, fuck skating, fuck jiu-jitsu, fuck life. Fuck being beautiful, because I feel ugly, and if I feel ugly, then that's what I must be.
The good news again is that I came out of it relatively easily. The bad news is that it happened at all. I thought I'd kicked it. I thought that a day or two at most was as much as I'd let my mind float around the depressive attractor before switching back into a more skillful state of mind.
Perhaps it's all progress. Perhaps it's just the aftermath of all the rage I'd been carrying with me lately.
Meditation seems to help at least as much as antidepressants ever did, and lovely NYC offers me a group sit to attend almost every evening of the week.
My friends have taught me to dumpster-dive (opening a produce bin in front of Whole Foods is an obvious enough skill, but one does need to be taught that it's an OK thing to do, since we've been taught ever since childhood that the only way to feel good is to buy something).
The prevailing circuitry in my brain is telling me I ought to feel digusted with myself. Something else in me, perhaps we can call it my heart, dissagrees. My heart says I should feel compassion and love for that curled-up-in-a-ball persona, but that I should also love the things outside it: the singing of a skate's blade on the ice, the warmth of a firend's hug, the intricacies that allow a plant to grow, the claw-scrapings of a leopard on a tree, the point of a dancer's toe in sillhouete at Alvin Ailey. Surely if I can love these things as dearly as I do, I can't, in any sense of the word, be pathetic. Surely I am lovely and alive and in love with that life? Surely this love will fucking manifest into my being someone worth being.