Skip to main content

From Hurt to Healing

"What day is it? I can't seem to hold on to days any more. It's really bothering me." 

My new friend M asks, shading her eyes to squint at me as we pause beside a swollen stream on our spring walk.  Trees reach out to each other above our heads, the path hugged by budding greenery, spotlights of sun dancing on the earth at our feet.

I chuckle softly.

My problem had always been the opposite.  I had a firm grasp on the days.

Monday November 26, 2012 - The day I was admitted to the adult mental health ward.

Monday October 6, 2014 - Returned to work. 

March 11, 2016 - The day the darkness loomed so great I left work again to save myself.

How could I have changed all the moments that led up to those days?  Now that I am unemployed, what will my future days look like?

"It's my favorite day.  It's today," I reply with a smile.  

I can tell she is not happy with that answer.  









Comments

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...

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...

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...