Skip to main content

It's a Brutiful Life...

I recently acknowledged my one year "back-to-work-iversary" after two years off after a deep dive into depression and anxiety--hospital stays--support groups, medication and therapy.  To borrow a word from Glennon Doyle Melton, it is Brutiful.  

It is Beautiful.  Tender, raw and vulnerable, falling forward into blinding fear and self-love --where everyone is doing the best that they can---really.  Undone by the spectre of judgement and perfectionism no more.

Brutal.  Tender, raw and vulnerable, falling backward into blinding fear and self-doubt -- where everyone is doing the best that they can? ---really?  Undone by the spectre of judgement and perfectionism! No more....

It is the flip side of the same coin and each day is a new toss.

I have been favoured with more Beautiful than Brutal.  

Life is Brutiful

But...

Brutal stalks my peripheral, winking, as I cast a furtive glance over my shoulder, my feet pounding the ground of what feels more and more like a treadmill to nowhere.  

Each day I face Brutal...head on and come out bruised and battered, my focus turns to the race, to avoiding a misstep as I navigate familiar old terrain that I had hoped was far behind me.  And Beautiful, that surrounds me, is lost to paranoia as I dare not falter in my mad dash to stay afoot.

To be sucked under again is terrifying.  Even knowing, as I do, that the strength and power are within me to rise again....I lower my head, lean in and double my efforts, feeling Brutal's stench so close in pursuit.

And then it happens...

It is brutal's day and you go down.




And you have no words.
You are exhausted.

And you feel like all that you have done is nothing.  You can't get to nowhere, you are already there.  You are nowhere and no one.  

But the secret is, that Beautiful is all around you.  But your eyes are closed to it and it's ok to give in to that BRUTAL day.  It's ok to have let Brutal win.

Because life is Brutiful.  Life can only be Beautiful if it is Brutal. and life can only be Brutal if it is likewise Beautiful.  

So today, I am grateful for Brutal.  

I will embrace brutal and let it wash over me.  I will lean into it and accept today I have fallen and am beat up and can see nothing besides darkness.  

Because so far, in my whole life, I have seen that light ALWAYS follows darkness.  Each having its time.  One for rest and one for growth.  One to shine and one to reflect.  

And like the ebb and flow, my life follows.  

I am...a Work in Progress.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Emotional Echos - Moments in Time

here are moments in time that define you. They are etched in your memory in a way that if you close your eyes you can see them again; feel them again. They are an emotional echo ---so strong, they leave an imprint on your soul. When I was eleven, my favorite "uncle" died suddenly, in my house, while I was off at the grandparents. He and my "aunt" came to town for a week long visit after moving away one year earlier and my parents decided to throw a grand party and invite all their old friends. My sister and I were sent to the grandparents for the weekend, and I was promised the week after we could come home and I could have "Uncle Bill" all to myself! I learned much later that early Sunday morning, my "aunt" woke up when my uncle accused her of stealing the covers. They both rolled back over and went back to sleep. Between then and 10 AM when she work up again, he had experienced a cardiac event (not his first I am sad to say) i...

It's All About the Here and Now

Today is a good day.   I have positioned my laptop on the dining room table in a way so that I can see the bird feeders.  Even through the closed doors I can hear the unique  warble of the yellow finches that have recently begun to frequent my yard.   This morning, cardinals-- the male brilliant in his scarlet coat and black mask -- returned, and as I watched, the male flew back and forth from the sunflower seeds to feed his mate .    Watching the birds gives me great joy and so I am trying to take the time to do this each day.  Were it not for this blog and how it makes me sit down and think, I can't say I would sit still long enough to do this. Taking time for myself is still a foreign concept. It is ironic that I have tried to attract birds to our pet free, quiet yard for years and the first year we have two dogs (one a squirrel/bird chasing terrier who launches hers...

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...