Writing my way from darkness back into light
This isn’t my photo. I found it on BlueSky. It just spoke to me. The single branch swamped in dark water with a single red breasted robin on it’s arthritic finger. It is a story of rebirth, renewal and recovery from a dark and solitary life to the freedom of a bird to soar on the winds of time. Too dramatic? Possibly. I just really like this picture, it gives me hope.
Spring has officially sprung when you see more ducklings in the pond than ducks. Happy Spring!
Well, I did it. I finally finished the third book in my trilogy. I can now evict the people who have been squatting in my head for the last, what feels like, 100 years. The time differential between the time I wrote it (March 1 until April 8) feels like the whole eighteen months which elapsed on paper. I realize a lot of my anxiety from the pressure of time was from the fictional days flying off the imaginary calendar, not the real one. I wrote close to 500 pages in about 40 days. It’s both amazing and dumbfounding and makes me wish I could just sit and write for a living. Adventures in publishing awaits; Any advice?
I love the saturation of the color on the orange and it reminds me that all the work I’ve done with my roots has brought forth strong limbs that has born beautiful fruit.
The color attracted me. Its like purple with a green undertone. Then I realized it represented how insidious depression can be. I broke a long time ago and I’ve been putting the pieces back together wanting to be whole and then a hidden root wiggles it way though a crack to remind me I’m not. The positive take-away from this image is just a little concerted effort and the little tendril of doubt/sadness/darkness can be yanked out and the crack repaired. All it takes is constant vigilance.
Christmas trees are lovely things and they bring to memories of happy times. But it’s MARCH. This just made me think of “Better Late than Never”.
This is something I learned about at the beginning of the year. It’s called a Glimmer…
A glimmer is the opposite of a trigger. Glimmers are those moments in your day that make you feel joy, happiness, peace or gratitude. Once you train your brain to be on the lookout for glimmers, those tiny moments will appear more and more.
So, I’m going to try and post my daily glimmers which I normally find on my morning walks. Some make me smile, some remind me of truisms I often forget when I’m busy trying. Stay tuned.
Although no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start now and make a brand new ending.
Carl Bard
I used this quote in my Birthday Blues Early post what feels like 100 years ago. It is more relevant now than it was then because it feels like I’m starting from zero in my public life. I’m trying to step in time with the spring renewal and make a new start with what seems to be a world against me. As an unemployed woman who is actively battling high functioning depression with a heaping side of anxiety I feel most days aren’t worth getting out of bed for. I toy with the idea of going on disability but I know it won’t get me to my goals…..and my goals are everything. But I am getting out of bed, and I am fighting the good fight most days.
My absence from the blog wasn’t planned. I thought about it often but my job had become too much for me to do anything else other than work, eat and sleep. I stopped going to church, I stopped writing in my journal, I stopped writing period and I stopped sharing my struggle (which had almost become a pleasant journey instead of the arduous saga of anger and sadness it started as).
I’ve been able to track this physical change back to January 2024 when I got COVID-19 for the first time. My symptoms started a week before the traditional COVID symptoms started. I got the gastro-intestinal start, and with IBS it’s hard to tell the difference. I used all my sick days (5 work days) and went back to work feeling not totally well but I persevered and I slowly eased back into the workload.
then, people quit, people were fired, people changed positions and I ended up working alone which caused the lingering COVID to encourage my IBS into overload……or over un-load, if you will. I was taking an antidiarrheal every third day and being completely exhausted when I got home to the point I had to sit in my car for 15-20 minutes after the drive to just rest.
My symptoms progressed to sever bouts of nausea, light headedness and my eyes pinning down to a single point of light if I stood to long……Essentially I couldn’t work. I took a month off to find out what was going on. When I went back I was okay according to the tests and paperwork but I wasn’t. The company and I found it mutually beneficial if we parted ways and I’ve been unemployed since.
Being unemployed is both a boon and a bane. My hope is these intervening months of rest have strengthened me physically and mentally. I will say, the holidays were hard and dark and somewhat dicey for my mental health. I continued to employ the tools I have learned in therapy like breathing and CBT, I took my medication religiously, and I crocheted a lot and listened to a multitude of books.
Additionally, I’ve prepared the first book in my trilogy for publication, completely wrote the second book and I am outlining the third book….when I’m not telling myself I’d be better off dead. Suicide does not align with my goals for life or the afterlife so I know not to take it seriously but it upsets me when my brain falls back to the old coping mechanisms. It does remind me how much I need to be ever mindful of my recovery. I don’t like feeling ‘the void’ in the background but I am very proud of myself that I am aware of it and I am fighting the good fight to get away from it.
a false or deliberate misstatement; lie:
Dictionary.com
Last Saturday I volunteered to close at the site we staff 365 days a year. I came in at open so it would be a nine hour day…ten if you count the hour I get for lunch…away from home and out of bed. I was trying to be helpful to my team and my bank balance. Mostly my bank balance. I made the decision before I left home actually, so when the offer came I didn’t ask the necessary question…Who am I working with?
I was working with a person who’s opinion of herself in regards to the rest of the team is of a queen bee over her drones. When I worked with her a few weeks ago, she said I “You are so slow. I’m fast.” When I scowled at her she quickly clarified “Because I just ate sugar.” Yes, I hadn’t gotten much processed for the first pack (40 something), but I got something done and it was correct. I tried processing the first pack early on in my tenure with the company which ended with me in tears and my manager and I agreeing I shouldn’t do the first pack until I felt I was ready. I did it that Saturday because I wanted to see if I was ready. Her jab, though self-aggrandizing, placed a spotlight on my self doubt and discomfort at the job I had done. I decided I shouldn’t do it again for another several months.
Saturday she came out and told me she talked to our manager and our manager said “She wants you to do the first pack,” I objected and said I was more comfortable doing the evening pack, she cut me off before I could finish with “No, our manager said I should do the closing pack so it’s done right.”
Saturday was our managers first day of vacation and gave instructions to contact someone else. If she actually did talk to our manager, our manager wouldn’t have green-lighted me working the first pack because of our past discussion. I could have called her on it, but I didn’t. I was angry and instead of confronting her about it I allowed the fury to transform into a soul darkening I’ll-show-you mantra knowing if I failed she’d have to clean up the mess ‘so it’s done right’. I processed and packed over 80.
I’m very pleased I did so well. People do more during the first pack but people do less too. I don’t need to be the best; the middle of herd of phlebotomists is just fine with me. What I am upset about is how I handled it. Though I’m not caught up in the anger of being so blatantly lied to, I am upset I didn’t stand up for myself. I am upset I didn’t protect me from what my psyche sees as a bully, a manipulator. I hate I still fall prey to those people. My protection for now is to not work with her again. Meaning, not working the closing shift which she normally covers and if that leaves my team in a bind then it leaves my team in a bind. I don’t like being around abrasive and abusive personalities, and if I can avoid it I will.
My other need to do is to talk to my manager. On the off chance she actually *did* talk to her on Saturday I need to clarify with her we hadn’t decided I was ready to do the first pack and to tell her I can do the first pack if called upon to do so. The discovery I am just as good and bad as anyone else in the group is the one positive thing from this negative episode at work.
Why am I so focused on this? That is the question. I’m still not back to writing other than here and my journal. I haven’t really discussed this in my journal, but I will. I think I’m taking this person’s behavior as a personal attack on me when I know she does this to EVERYBODY. What I’m realizing as I write this, which is why I love writing here, is if I were back doing what I’m supposed to be doing with my life-Writing-things like this roll off my back because I gain strength in and for myself when I write. Starting this weekend I’m going to force myself, in a nice way, to sit at my computer and try to push past the last of the debris of my fall and start taking those small steps I talked about. I need to stop self-prevaricating that I can’t so I shouldn’t try, for there is strength and honor in the trying.
Taking the time off from working on what needs still to be done in my head was an excellent idea. I didn’t realize you can take a break from things like that. Well, I guess you can stop anything, even if it’s good for you, but the dedicated unceasing work is what has gotten me so far so fast. (Fast by the world’s standards, it’s been a long slog from where I’m sitting). But now, it’s back to the work. From the start of December I’ve been distracting myself with books I’ve listened to before (Harry Potter, Elantris, 14, Dragons Blood Omnibus), shopping and, of course, eating. It’s no longer and option to let my brain stand still with old stories, spending money I don’t have and eating myself into a coma. Standing still is a mixed blessing though. About 23 years ago I walked the Honolulu Marathon, and in a lot of ways getting my life back has been akin to that long hot day in December 2000. I did fine until mile 16 or so and then it felt like I was walking through amber. I kept putting one foot in front of the other then something in my brain snapped and said it was never going to end, I was never going to survive and I might as well give up now. That’s when I pulled out the Extra Strength Gu Gel with double the caffeine and choked it down with a few sips of water. I finished: I have the shirt and the medal to prove it too. So, instead of doing the Gu Gel at this 16 mile marker in my emotional marathon I did more of a rest and now I know why I didn’t rest in 2000….I wouldn’t have wanted to go back to it.
I have therapy on the 17th, so I’ll make that my official back-to-the-work day. I bought the physical book of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown so I can use it as a text book and make my own notes and how I want to apply his lessons. I got it with another book called Deep Work by Cal Newport in a packaged deal from Amazon. I’ve started my writing again, I get up at the same time (4:30ish) on the Saturday I have off during the month and write for about five hours and I try to do basic edit or input edits in the evening or on Sunday. It works, but if I can get more work done in the same space of time then I will. It too is a physical book but I might splurge and get the audio book as well so I can listen to it on my way into work during the week. From those books I want to write my New Years Goals so I can break them down into S.M.A.R.T. goals for monthly direction. But again, I need to get back to the work!
Though the work was at rest my mind was still aware of what I was doing right and very aware of what I was doing wrong. My eating spiraled a little more than usual but not to pre-apocalyptic levels which is good, but it was more out of control then my normal stress-eating. I couldn’t get full no matter how much I ate and I couldn’t easily talk myself out of buying the extra bag of oreos no matter how hard I tried. As I explained in An Act of Christmas I need to stay true to my ideal of Christmas and be more productive in doing what I can do to help in the world. Next Christmas will be more of what I want and need it to be by starting this month toward my Act of Christmas 2023. With the new year I feel calmer and more in control. The two packages of oreos remain on my shelf unopened on top of an unopened box of Godiva chocolate a patient gave me for Christmas. It could be I’ve just been too tired to walk the 20 feet to the shelf to get them but I’m counting it as a win. I’m cringing now at the money I spent on me over the last month but I feel it was for things I needed and wanted and not spending money I didn’t have on online police auctions every time my mother irritated me. I think what I’m trying to convey is that I’m better, but I’m not at the finish line. The work yet to be done, the deeper work I’ve been dreading are the big boxes in my dream from 22 July 2022 Dream a Little Dream my closing statement was, mostly pertaining to the boxes still on the shelf:
…(bravely confront the past injuries, resolve the confusion, and end the subconscious suffering to move forward).
Dream a Little Dream, Bloggingfromthevoid.com
I’ve identified the anger at my sisters is more of the anger of the child I abandoned (me) in trying to protect myself growing up. I’m not sure if that makes any sense, but the anger I feel toward my sisters feels immature and the fire from that anger too hot and plentiful to be that simplistic. I’ve started listening to the book by Thich Nhat Hanh Reconciliation instead of reading his Anger book because this realization of where the anger was coming from became apparent and more urgent as I was reading the book on Anger. In Dream a Little Dream I talked about how the boxes were things I didn’t want to deal with and still I don’t want to deal with . As my history of stuffing things I don’t want to deal with in boxes and paying an immoderate storage fee attests, I’m really good at avoiding things. The need to get passed the anger, the need to feel at peace with myself is starting to outweigh the need to just keep the abandoned child placated with cookies and chocolate. I’ve named her Little Dragon because of the fire she evokes and she is going to be my priority going forward for this year. Her and getting the first book of three ready to submit to a publisher. That’s not expecting too much of myself, is it? {sigh}
Blogging From The Void 