Just Keep Moving

I spent the weekend in Greenville with friends, which was really refreshing. I'm still struggling with depression-related awfulness, but the trip helped get me out of my head to refocus on what I need to do in order to get through this.

We did some really fun and energetic ritual work, and despite my feeling really scattered and unfocused, it helped in a big way. Laughter has been fairly rare these days, so getting a good gleeful cackle was wonderful. I also picked up some orange calcite and moss agate to help with things, along with a smokey quartz mala for my meditation practice. Slow and steady, slow and steady...

  

#10kbefore10am

I'm also back on the workout horse, as it were. I didn't want to -- it was so cold this morning and I just wanted to stay in bed -- but I'm happy I did. I kept my heart rate in the peak range for 40 minutes to get that sweet, sweet runner's high and my body didn't disappoint.

Things have been good with the SAM-e. Nothing huge to report, but I've felt a lot less hopeless and less fatigued. I'm not frolicking through the halls, but I'm able to get out of bed in the morning and that's nothing to sneeze at.

I'm still here and working through things. I'm going to go walk in the (cold) sunshine at lunch and run through my breathing exercises. I'm going to do my very best to accept the turning of the year by honoring and letting go of this fear and panic as the weather gets colder. It's hard, but I can do this.

If You Can't Walk, Crawl

I'm having a really rough time tonight.

Depression is a tricky beast. It's easy to believe that you're seeing life for what it really is, that the veil has been lifted and the soft glow of whimsical self-delusion has been ripped away. It makes the condition of depression feel more like a personal belief instead of a disorder, because while you're miserable, some part of you whispers that you're finally seeing life for what it really is.

Depression is a dirty liar.

Tonight I'm feeling desperately unwanted and irreparably broken. I feel unloved and inconvenient, like I ruin everything I touch. I feel like human trash. I feel like I make people uncomfortable. I feel out of sync and out of place, that my words are never right and my actions are always off. It's physically painful and I feel like I will never be able to convince myself to be happy again.

I also know, distantly, that it's the depression talking. It's hard to separate the two on a regular basis -- sometimes I lay paralyzed in bed just wishing I could convince myself that the stories that the depression tells aren't true. I, like a friend I talked with today, get as far as imagining a world where I'm healthy and awesome... and then come crashing back to this world with fresh cargo of guilt and shame at not being what I wish I were.

Sometimes you have to ride it out. I imagine that this is my underworld, that this is the biome in which my shadow self thrives. I imagine her standing tall and solid in a landscape that is crushing me. She lives and breathes this every day. My personal demons are her neighbors and she invites them over for tea. She is not afraid.

She is me. I just have to find her again.

Walking in Shadow

Traveling as we are through the dark time of the wheel, I walk a fine line between embracing the lessons of the shadow self and the dark face of the goddess, while also trying to find light to get me through the seasonal affective problems that have been ramping up. My previous coping mechanisms have leaned strongly toward taking root on my couch or in bed until the sun came back, but that doesn't help in the long run.

I haven't really exercised since Samhain due to injury, but I started again this week with a gentle half hour on the elliptical. It's not much, but I'll get there. I also started taking SAM-e for depression (with a B complex vitamin) and will see how it goes. My hope is that it'll at least lighten a little of the thick, heavy blanket of numbness that keeps creeping over me. I made all these great plans on how I was going to fight off SAD this year, but when you don't have the energy to actually do those things, it makes the best made plans rather useless. 

Freehand drawing makes for a
wobbly triskele, but I like it

One thing that's really come through is gentle exercises in no-pressure creativity. I'm a lot more likely to partake in something that my brain would try to convince me is frivolous if I've committed to doing it with friends, so a couple of us planned a trip to the ceramics studio. It's a paint-your-own affair, so there was no pressure to create a masterpiece from scratch (although that'd be really fun). It was my second time around, so I'd learned from my bigger mistakes and made something that was forgiving of uneven paint application. 

I went for something bright and green that would remind me of spring's promise. It diverges from my focus on the darktime and my shadow self, but I'm not quite fully able to embrace the dark on this journey through the wheel while also battling depression. I'm not shying away from the darkness of the internal underworld, just making sure I have light when I need it most.

Responsibility in Anger

Letting go of anger is one of the most difficult aspects of "knowing myself" that I face. There's a sort of seduction in it -- the promise that your rage can level those obstacles that stand in your way. So today, when faced with...let me take a moment for a deep breath and some centering... a person who I have difficulty with, it took a tremendous effort to scale back and away from wishing grievous harm upon him.

In many ways I feel that as a witch I have a greater responsibility to control my feelings. That sense of responsibility feels unfair sometimes, particularly when watching someone else have a cathartic meltdown.

That said, giving in to anger is to allow another to manipulate us. And that, my dear, will never do.

Into the Dark

With Samhain behind us, I find myself tiptoeing around the edges of the Dark Time between now and Yule, terrified of what this means for me but also strangely hopeful.

The Dark Goddess
(picture found here)

Much of this is a spiritual fear -- there's so much that I've buried within, so much that I've not faced or have arrogantly glossed over that I'm shaken and terrified of going into the underworld of the self to meet it. Up until this point, I've always seen the Dark Time as being symbolic or a reference to the quiet slumbering of the natural world, tying it more closely to the beginning of seasonal affective disorder than a journey of the self. I've learned a hard lesson these past few days: the Dark Time is both, and more.

I'm frightened. The Goddess is dark, unwilling to coddle me with boughs of spring leaves and flowers or to shine down upon me in the height of summer. She commands that I do the work that must be done, and doesn't let me make excuses.  She is wise and she has spoken.

I'm working to embrace the terror, to understand it and respect the lessons it has to teach me. Going into the underworld of the self is something I've done before, something that I've often associated with the lessons of the shadow self, but this feels bigger somehow, and darker than I've faced. A lot of big changes need to be made and a lot of truths must be acknowledged -- truths that I've been running from for as long as I can remember. I know that the Goddess isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but I've successfully explained away her call in the Dark Times up until this point. I feel that She's been understanding, but the loudest message I'm receiving right now is that I can't grow if I continue to deal with things as I did when I was younger.

I'm a grown woman now, and I have work to do.

I sat outside this morning to watch the rain. I injured myself last week, so taking the break from working out meant that I had no excuse from the spiritual, and went up to breezeway on the third floor at work to watch the cold rain. The trees are clothed in their finest colors, but I can't help but dwell on what this means -- the leaves will fall, the earth will slumber, and I will be alone.

As I watched that bleak sky, I remembered the raw emotional scraping I felt when I woke up this morning, the first glancing scuff of seasonal depression telling me that nothing is worthwhile and that there's no meaning to anything. I won't give in. The path I am walking in the Dark Times is frightening and requires a lot of work, but I won't give in to the grey nothing that tells me to give up.

I'm having a hard time finding my words this morning, but I'm not apologizing -- I'm accepting it for what it is and moving forward. With practice, they should come with greater ease.