Skip to main content

THE WALL

I feel like I have come a long way in my journey back to self---or more accurately, journey on to new self.  About a year ago I was trying to find a comfortable way to sit on the couch as shingles like nerve pain razor through my flanks and back.  About a year ago the Spouse took 9 children to a bowling alley, did cake and presents for our then 8 year old, while I was curled up in a ball crying --full of guilt, pain and hopelessness. Last year at this time exactly I was in the adult mental health ward of the local hospital---Day 1. It is a slow journey---and I have never been known for my patience, but I AM trying to let it happen as it happens.
 
I celebrate that I have committed to the gym--to meditation--fellowship--continued learning--time out for massage therapy and acupuncture--and reengaging a creative drive that has been sorely neglected.  Simple things have come back to me---like being able to read---like being able to follow a recipe...like laughter. And I have overcome things---like social anxiety---like slowly accepting my new medication induced body shape (ok, I still have a way to go on that one).
 
But here is THE WALL. (If you have seen Game of Thrones you will know THE WALL.  The books are fabulous, but to truly understand its scale, you need to see it on a big screen TV.)  I keep looking for a secret passage through or around it but it stands before me still.  I cannot avoid it.  I can turn left and walk for awhile.  I can turn right and walk for awhile.  But if I want to move forward, I have to find some way to get over or through this wall.
 
It is only now, after a year of piecing myself together that I can appreciate this post by Lissa Rankin. 
lissamatt0656
This part struck home:
 
What about when you’re trying to keep your heart open with those you work with in your professional life, but the knuckleheads in charge of the purse strings keep insisting that you sell out your integrity, seemingly with no concern for the well-being of those you’re trying to serve?
 
It is the big thing---the one that looms dark and silent and threatens to send me back to where I was, regardless of where I work or what I do.   There is no possible way I could capture this feeling as well as she has and so I give you the link and let you decide if you can keep your own heart open when your angry.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mind the Gap

I have been browsing my writing. Just a few samples here and there. Noting the gaps--like the big one where I posted on the eve of 2020 not knowing a global pandemic would shut down the world and then didn't post again until just last week. Feels like that would have been a good time to write. During a pandemic.  Write about survival mode, collecting oldest and his gf from their rental to camp out in our basement bedroom for five months, the middle home as college was closed and R and I getting a week to figure out how to be online college instructors. There were days of washing groceries, yelling at my mom and step-dad to get their asses home from Florida before the boarder closed and scouring the internet for toilet paper and masks. It was exhausting and scary and bitterness flowed unhampered at every #qualitytimewiththekiddos" posting of crafts and puzzles and tiktok dances from those who found themselves at home, not working.  It was all hands on deck at our place wi...
Post a Comment
There is more good stuff--keep reading»

Keeping Afloat in Darkness - When Robin Williams is Gone

A few weeks ago Robin Williams was everywhere you looked. People were desperate for details; to find the one thing that assured them that his situation was so different from theirs that they are safe; that it could never be them. But if you suffer from depression, the suicide of such a brilliant, successful, individual; part of our lives for so many years and responsible for so many laughs; looks like a leak in your boat. A friend asked me, "Ok but no one knows what the future holds.  Could he not see that?" For someone drowning in the dark spiral of depression, there is no future. There is only now. There is only nothing.  The boat is gone.  You are under. It is not about your spouse or your friends or your kids or career or fans or dogs or anything.  When the darkness squeezes it is all about now.  And now is nothing.  It is bleak and empty and so dark, you cannot see a bottom, or edges or surface ---just darkness. "Some...
4 comments
There is more good stuff--keep reading»

The Four Agreements - The Baseline

  So I bought the book.  It's smaller than I thought it would be.  Since I am always hoping that the solution to an problem can be found if you just look long and hard enough, I'm still not sure if short means it's an easy solution, or no solution at all. The book itself has some singing endorsements from many self-help gurus who I don't know other than by name.   It's disheartening to me to realize that there are thousands of folks out there preaching their brand of "if you just knew this, did this and continued to strive for excellence every day" because if any of them had the real secret (ah yes, then there is "The Secret") we would only really need one book/podcast/app etc. Thirty years ago the self help section at Chapters filled one rack top to bottom.  Looking for this book, I had to wander through ISLES of self-help, wellness and  spirituality before I found what I was looking for. How Chapters has evolved into a pillow/candle/water bottl...
Post a Comment
There is more good stuff--keep reading»