I hate complaining on Facebook. And I know my concerns are paltry compared to whats happening in our country now. To what others are feeling and have felt.
But I have to say… personally, the last two weeks have been utter shit. Everything that I have to do and get done just feels impossible lately. All my positive tools and behaviors are buckling. My schedules, my reminders, my good habit building, its been kinda collapsing. It feels hard to enjoy anything, to relax, and to stop worrying and feeling guilty.
I’ve been really bad at my work, I am missing chores, ignoring the garden, and just feeling like I’m failing as a dad and husband. I know I am still getting a LOT done. But I just feel drained. Bah! Bleugh! Mew!
And Maryland’s humidity… it finally started getting to me. I still forced myself out jogging today, and it felt like I was running through soup. I had to stop multiple times to catch my breath. I knew I was in a beautiful forest, birdsong and flowers, but I all could feel was the heat, the moisture, and hopelessness inside of me.
All the same, even as a I feel overwhelmed and exhausted, I don’t feel despair. And that is a nice change. I may be nosediving in my growth and energy, but I have tools for that as well now. When everything is shit, that’s when I stop fighting and I accept it and watch. And maybe, for me, this is where the greatest change lies. Its not how I handle the good months, its how I handle the horrible weeks. Its how far I fall, when it is time to fall.
As I was jogging today through the soup (and my fears and emotions), I had an interesting vision.
I am standing in the middle of raging mountain river. I am trying to stand upright, keeping my position, but the rushing, churning waters keep hitting me, twisting me, shaking me, and pushing me back. I am about to be toppled and I will be dragged through the foaming rapids. The truth is that I cant handle the river that is in front of me right now. There is nothing I can do about all that water rushing at me, I can’t stop it or turn it away.
So I feel for a large stone at on the river bottom. A stone that has been there, solid, immobile, for centuries, under all that rushing water. I kneel and sit down in the water, my back to the stone, my face to the angry current. I give up on trying to stand and balance, on walking, on any sort of progress. I am now inside the rushing river, the water up to my neck, waves breaking on my face. I close my eyes, and I feel the stone at my back. This is where I am right now. In the thick of it. The water is so close to overwhelming me. But it won’t carry me away. I am immobile like the stone behind me. I accept that I am in this river, but what I will feel is the stone at my back. This is how I will get through this until the current subsides.
The vision over, back on the forest path, I had to ask myself. So what is it? What is my stone? What can I lean against when the current threatens to topple me. What can I feel at my back even as the waters reach my neck? I fell a bit self-conscious sharing this, but for me, it was the decision to not be depressed that I made last year. I feel it like a fire inside of me, always burning, and no amount of humidity can quench it. Maybe things are crap, maybe they are overwhelming, maybe the waters are up to my neck, but I am not going to be depressed again. Even if I stumble, even if I fall, I will get up, I will keep growing, and getting better. And for now I am sitting down in a mountain river. It is what it is.
I hope you’all are doing better than me. But if not. I hope you have a stone to lean on as well. There is probably more current ahead.
