“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful...How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural--you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
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Dearest Daughters,
I wish I could tell you that the cloud has lifted.
I can’t say it’s worse, but neither can I say it’s better.
It just is and it sits.
Most of the time I’m feeling-less--numb, robotic, going about my day as an at-least functional, if not exuberant human being.
Down, I’d say. In a funk, I used to call it, before I had a diagnosis, a list of symptoms, a name to put to it.
Then, there are the moments. These are not good moments. They are not glimpses of hope moments. They are heavy and dark, intense. The thoughts take over. I try hard to push against them, to drown them out.
YOU ARE JUST THOUGHTS, I yell, my brain whirling.
It’s cinematic, really. Bathroom. Zoom in on my face, tears flowing, those ugly silent sobs, gasping, into the steady stream of the shower, the steam heavy in the air, muffling my cries, my pain, my prayers, my desperate pleas for help—from God, if God exists, I think, I don’t know, I can’t be sure of it right now.
And I don’t dare look in the mirror. If you’ve ever cried in a bathroom, you’ll know, from the age of two to 102, you’ll just feel more pathetic and sob ever the harder at the sight of your sorry self.
These thoughts and feelings are at once alien—not a part of me, coming upon me from some abyss—and all too familiar.
I’ve silently screamed in the shower or into my pillow for as long as I can remember. But, I never had a name for these intense periods of helplessness, self-loathing and unspeakable thoughts.
I always thought that (sometimes rightly so) I was being a dramatic teenager or college roommate or wife. I thought others felt these things too. Felt the pain and desperation that causes one to yearn for an end, for The End, to entertain thoughts of one’s escape.
We all get mad at our parents and mumble to ourselves about running away and never coming back, but I only recently realized that not everyone thinks about throwing themselves out of a moving car. And not in an action-adventure-movie-Tom-Cruise-saves-the-day kind of way.
I don’t mean to worry you, Dearest Daughters. I don’t mean for you to think that I always feel this way. And even when I am depressed, it’s only for a few intense moments over the course of several days where I can’t cope, where the feelings are bigger than me and the world is too much to handle. And I become that scene, alone in the bathroom. You know, the hot mess adult tantrum, the tears flowing, the silent screaming and all.
Now, I have a name, a reason, an explanation for these overwhelming moments.
So, when the darkness takes hold these days, I know that I can and will overcome. It will never be so bad as it was back in April [2012] where I spent hours upon hours, days, in this state.
I know I can’t outrun the pain, I can’t ignore it, I can’t deny it, but I know I’ll be able to get through it. To the other side, as they say.
I know that these are just thoughts. The thoughts, they are not me. I am not my thoughts. I repeat this over and over to myself, as many times as it will take—even though the thoughts feel so true, they seem so real, the pain is palpable—it’s all I can do and more to not give in. To not believe. To not succumb.
When I’m not battling against my mind, I’m waiting.
I wait. For the thoughts to pass. For the feelings to subside. For sleep. For the darkness to dissipate. For the cloud to lift.
I wait for the light.
It will come.
Love you no matter what,
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
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