Depression and Anxiety Are My Special Needs Children

( ... and yet another cross-posting.) (I struggled with whether to put this here, because it doesn't pertain to Rob. And it doesn't pertain to grief ... not really. But it does have to do with depression and anxiety and that, my friend, is a lovely thing called "byproduct" of grief. More 'shadows of grief' you might say...  Tell me if you think this was inappropriate here. Thanks.)

 

Movies I watch can inspire me to write or paint or sculpt.

But some only create the longing for it, and not the release – like the nightmares where you can’t scream but know that if you try with all that is in you, you could make enough noise to cast your voice out among the billions who also trudge this land.

There’s an ache – when I feel unable to create my art -- a loneliness that wiggles inside my brain so that it hurts, and my throat so that I cannot communicate.

My fingers are frozen at the page, clamped desperately around the pen. My breath stops as I wait for the timid kernel of inspiration to share itself through me – but alas, it is not Inspiration or Idea or even Plot Device that appears  … it is: Clamminess, Brick Wall, Pettiness, Fatigue, and Not Good Enough.

The metallic sour taste of lethargy and self- judgment sit with me when the longing to create art is strongest. I’ve sat with and asked these soul-sucking companions why they visit. I sometimes get a response and sometimes not.

I wonder how to get rid of them – like they are the slugs on my sugar snap peas that eat holes before I get a taste.

But perhaps I should simply share space with these evil shadows of myself and honor their place in my house. What if I extended love to them, accepted them and knew there was an ancient lesson they came to teach me, if only I would listen --  like the hundreds of thousands of families with special needs children?

Depression and Anxiety are my special needs children. I court them, suckle them and find their triggers to tantrums. I sit with Depression and rock him to sleep with haunting music lilting from the iTunes across the room; I coax Anxiety out to play -- break out the glue and treeless paper and collage until she is more grounded.

I discover their strengths and weaknesses and take time out for myself when they become too much for me to bear alone. I nurture myself with popcorn and movies under the feather blanket, hot tea with a friend, or an afternoon alone at a coffee shop with my laptop and latte. And I think. I take time to Feel.

When I do this -- when I give myself permission to emote -- only then am I open enough to welcome ideas and plans and as-of-yet formless characters into the sacred circle I have created for them.  Only then am I able and willing to give birth to their stories.

But that’s not right either. I am always willing. That yearning and longing to write and to create are always there. But maybe the readiness is not.

Maybe I must coddle my children, Depression and Anxiety before I can create. But … I don’t believe that one must be depressed or suffer anxiety attacks in order to create art. Art lives in us, we breathe it as air and it binds to the molecules within us. We bleed our art. We are art.

Perhaps I don’t need to be depressed to create art, but that if I am struggling with it at some particular time, I must sit with it first before I attempt to express an emotion I do not yet understand. Only if I take time to nurture myself, to Think, to Feel, to ask Depression why he had another nightmare, to ask Anxiety why she cried today when the house was a mess – maybe then I can unfreeze my fingers and find my voice and let it roar with all the passion and longing and creativity I have.

And then, I can create. I can write, paint and sculpt. I can communicate and breathe and love myself again. All the parts of me. Even the shadowy parts.

The Functionality of Grief

I just wanted to send out an apology to my readers of this blog.

It seems that I only feel compelled to write in my grief blog when I feel grief. (Go figure.)

Lately I am immersed in the holidays, family vacations, catching up with the laundry and dishes after the family vacation, a four day weekend, and Imbolc is tomorrow. A new hamster has arrived in our home, more holidays are coming, two birthdays coming up, and Valentine's Day plus my anniversary to my husband.

Lots of stuff is on my mind (oh and I'm reading my book club book, trying to edit a bit of my manuscript every week and start sending out query letters for magazine articles, too), so I am not currently in a state of grief.

It comes in waves, and it seems that this blog will come and go in waves, too. Though, for grieving readers, I understand that that is not the nurturing hand-holding that you need right now. If you need to connect and there isn't a new post for two months ... how can you feel connected?

So, here is my proposition.  You can comment on any of these postings in this blog and I will find it and email you back. If you choose a non-public forum, you may email me direct. You may comment on a posting, saying you want a private email. I will email you privately, thereby giving you my email address.

You can also check out my other blogs where I write about other aspects of my life. You will see subtle cross-overs into grief, because so much of what we encounter during our lives is tainted with grief. It can be a shadow that clouds out our peace during certain days, or months, or always.

This is not to say that you will always be depressed and weepy and unable to function on a daily basis because of your grief. But that you will wear your grief with grace. It touches (perhaps that is a better word than 'taints') pieces of your life and becomes a part of who you are.

I can't always think of milestones in my children's lives, without also thinking about Rob and his absence. Sometimes I am melancholy about it, other times I think: What a character! He would've loved this. And then I laugh.

Sometimes I remember his love for me and I feel sorrow that I don't have that now. True, I have a different kind of love, from a different kind of man and I have love for him. And, I don't have Rob's love anymore. Not in this realm, at least.

Sometimes I reach out into that other realm and connect, even for the briefest seconds. It brings a calm, snuggly feeling that reminds me that I am never alone. That his love really is there, even if I don't experience it every day.

But maybe I don't experience it because I don't reach out more often. But if I did that, would my husband now be affected? Would our relationship be affected? Would it diminish if I thought too much about Rob? Would it stagnant my growth as a person if I clung to the past? A past that can never be returned to me.

So are my thoughts this morning ... along with: it is lunchtime and I don't want to fix lunch for me and the children (Paul is a work), and we are going over to a friend's house to do some work on her house and I'd much rather get in sweats and pretend I can knit. :)

I hope you are well in spirit today.

Just for today.

Tomorrow is in the future, and we will only focus on today.

Just today, feel peace.

Namaste.