Friday, September 10, 2010

That Black Dog Is Sitting On My Porch Again





Yes. I can see the light.
Can you?

And although I can see it, that light, although I know it's there, it's not doing a damn thing for me.
I've got it. The full-tilt, definitely not a boogie but rather a boogie-man of blues. Depression. Whatever you want to call it.

It's found its way back like an traveling salesman carrying his pack on his back who has arrived back in his circuit of sales and he's set his bundle down on my front porch and stretched and I made the mistake of offering him a drink of cold water from the well and when he opened his pack, instead of the pins and needles and pots and pans and yards of calico one would expect to see, it was full of snakes and dark green poisonous herbs and dead spiders, all wrapped in the shrouds of their tattered webs and the peddler laughed a croaky creak of a laugh and set off down the path at a lope, leaving me with his horrible goods.

Or something like that.

You'd think at this point in my life I could just shut the door and stand behind it and say a spell and the evils would melt away and I could get on with my life but no, even now, even now, I don't know what to do when this mess is dumped on me.

And the rotten thing is, I don't know why this particular bout of it has descended. I can't put my finger on anything. My husband and children are as loving as ever, my grandson is about to turn one, I'm involved at the Opera House with wonderful, beautiful people,



and Kathleen is doing well and is so strong and the garden is cleaned out and Mr. Moon came home last night and planted cabbages and greens and last-ditch tomatoes.



I have spare coffee and paper towels and my chickens are all present and accounted for and laying eggs. The firespike is blooming

and I have cotton sheets and I have friends I love so damn much that every time I talk to them I cry.

I don't think that's normal, though. In fact, it's a sure sign that I'm depressed. Billy calls and I cry. I hear Lis's voice and I cry. Mr. Moon calls from work and...I cry. Not big gulping tears or sobs, just stupid little eye-leak and I'm doing it now, too. I wish I could just break down and weep like a real human being. Just let it go. Just cry so long and so hard that eventually, my heart would give up the reason for this sadness.
Ah. It probably wouldn't help. I'd just go to that place I always go during times like this- all the old sorrows that I should be grown up enough by now to laugh about or at least just accept as it-is-what-it-is, it-was-what-it-was and go on.

Well. La-di-dah and so forth. It's all just feelings and they will pass. They always do. It is heartening to know this. When I was younger, it was impossible to see that they would when I was in these depths but now I know better and that knowledge alone makes it all more bearable. And it's not anxiety- which IS unbearable. Well, okay, there may be a tiny bit of anxiety-flavored morsels tucked in with this black pudding of depression but it's NOT the same and for that I am MOST grateful. I can live with depression but not with the anxiety.

I don't even have it in me to do haiku today. Maybe later.
I'll go take a walk and see if that helps. As I just wrote to dear Ms. Bastard-Beloved in an e-mail, depression is just like this bottomless pit of sorrow and no one in the world can fill it up.
You just have to wait until you float to the surface, see the light again. Not just see it, but feel it entering your heart, your soul.
And it will. It always does. I've got my eye on it, that light. I've shut the door on the sorrows, I'm trying real hard to remember the spell to break their curse.

And so it goes on this Friday, September 10th, 2010.

Be well, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

18 comments:

  1. You're right, it will pass on through and the good things will feel good again.

    Love to you xx

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  2. So sorry Mary. It comes and goes in its own ways, doesn't it? I feel like I'm bobbing in the ocean somedays, it takes me like the tides. I spent Wednesday with a lump in my throat, and tears wanting to come but they didn't, and I don't know why either. I'm guessing because i woke up with half of me aching and I'm tired, so tired of that. But maybe its the sudden onset of chilly weather, the golden corn waiting for harvest, the ending and waiting to start over.
    I wish there were a tea or tincture or accupunture to make it all better. When i get like this, I think I just need a hug, but they make me cry too. Thank goodness it goes away from time to time. Thank goodness you tell us your truth so our own feels lighter in the sharing.
    Until it passes, I wish you love, support, sunshine and tissues.
    Hugs.

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  3. I totally wish I lived in Florida (not only for the beaches and great winters) so that I could give you a big ole hug and then a swift kick in the rear....because that just might jump start a smile in your heart.

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  4. Oh Ms Moon, I hope your clouds pass quickly.

    I am too familiar with being locked in that dark room of things-are-good-but-I-am-not feeling and heaviness and exhaustion. It takes diligence and a small team of professionals to keep me out of that place and sometimes it's still not enough. And that "sometimes" feels like an ungrateful forever and then it lifts.

    I send you hugs and Kleenex until it lifts.

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  5. The "pit" is exactly how I describe it too. And I, too, have learned that it will pass but it still is no fun to be there. I don't think there is an external trigger for the blues - it just feels like there should be. Perhaps it is hormonal or dietary or something. I have fewer episodes since taking GABA from the health store daily for anxiety and 5htp if I do feel particularly low.

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  6. So sorry about this. I'm afraid it's just your nature, as it is mine...
    Lucy

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  7. Do you feel my hand? I'm holding yours.

    Hang in there.

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  8. Jo- Knowing that is my saving grace.

    Mel- Thank-you. And I wonder sometimes- it is the pain which causes the sorrow or the sorrow which causes the pain. Either way- that stupid commercial is correct- depression hurts.

    Rebecca- If anyone kicked me in the ass I'd probably...well, it would not be pretty. But thanks for the thought and it may well be just what I need.

    Lisa- I wonder why so many of us know this black dog so well.
    I sure wish we didn't.

    Jeannie- It's all a tricky dance, isn't it?

    Lucy- I do believe you are right. Lucky us.

    Elizabeth- And I am holding yours.

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  9. I don't like the blues. I don't like how they invade my life and how I look out from my eyes and can't really see what I want to. It sucks the air out. The only saving of it is the deepest thoughts come out, more profoundly that when I feel happy. Write what you are thinking Ms. Moon...write and purge.

    I sure wish I was nearby...I would say let's go out to lunch,get out and go somewhere beautiful...maybe a picnic...I'll make it even if you bring some dessert.

    Know that we, your blogger friends support you..happy or sad. Life throws out some lou-lou of days and some incredible ones two.

    I ditto what Elizabeth said...and some tears can fall on my shoulders for as long as you want.

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  10. Oh Ms. Moon...
    You be well too... hope this passes quickly.

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  11. So sorry, Mary. I feel fortunate that I don't have depression really heavy anymore. It's just more of a uncomfortableness, a listlessness now--where something just feels WRONG. It's not agonizing, just a drag waiting for it to lift.

    I hope your black dog decamps very soon.

    I love you.

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  12. I find that when I am very tired, I am more susceptible to the blues. It also is fall and just the beauty of that light that you photograph is haunting for me. I think fall is bittersweet. Days are shorter and we know the dark of winter is coming. I am touched to the depth of my soul by the beauty of the light and its reflection on the water. The beauty makes something within swell to near bursting.

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  13. Big hugs and big love and a big package coming soon.

    xoxoxo

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  14. i was just sitting outside near a fire pit on Lake Tahoe with grasshopper Kathy who introduced me to your blog and I said, have you read Ms Moon, lately, I haven't had a chance and I was wondering how she is. I told you you wrote to me "how do you do the thing you cannot do" and that you wanted me to let you know how it went. You believed in me. You knew I could and so I'm here and you had a part in that. I know what you mean about anxiety vs depression. I know you will ride it out, but I'm still sorry that peddler (great images) dumped all his crap on your door step. And the reasons are not in your todays. THat sadness is so old, I think, and it's just part of you. I wish it wasn't. But it surfaces when it does and you do a fine job with it I think. You inspire me.
    Big hugs from California, yea me, crazy shit!

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  15. It comes. It goes. Maybe too much good stuff brings it on as well? Damned if I know. Big hugs to you. You do write well even when you're depressed but even if you didn't we'd all sit with you until it passes.

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  16. Ellen- Exactly. Depressed eyes cannot see the truth. And you know- I think this one is not a lasting one. I love you for saying all you said. Thank-you.

    Corinne- I can feel it slipping away. I can.

    Ms. Bastard-Beloved- It is sniffing around the edges of the yard, not sitting on the porch. I am most grateful.

    Syd- You are right, as always. And I have been getting lots more sleep and it is helping and yes, the beauty of these days is overwhelming.

    May- And I am loving you.

    Michelle- I am not worthy! I love you.

    Bethany- Reading that made me cry again, but sweetly. I am SO proud of you. I am so glad you are with your beloved Grasshopper, so far from home, but okay. Yeah- crazy shit but crazy GOOD shit. Love from me.

    Mwa- I think so. Sometimes too much good overwhelms those of us who never expected much good at all. You are wise. I love you and would sit with you, too.

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  17. I've finally realized that I cannot have the highs of my life without the lows. Depression comes and goes with varying levels in my life, no matter how fabulous or horrible its status is.

    One good thing is it really opens up the mind for appreciating the joy when it returns, right?

    Hope the joy is just around the corner for you...

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.