What a long, long year. September is one of my "new year anchors". I kind of ignore January. Seasonal Affective Disorder means that I never feel like doing anything more or new or extra or healthy in January. And then there's my old friend February. But March and September are my weigh points. March starts with my birthday and ends with spring. A perfect time for new habits and reflection. 

September closes out the heat of the summer and has some of the most beautiful mornings and evenings. It also has both my wedding anniversary and my work anniversary at my current company (7 years for one and 6 for the other if anyone is counting). Lots of things to check in on and think about. Plus, autumn is like a second spring in the gardening world. Lots of plants need their seeds to experience the cold and damp of winter before they are ready to sprout in the spring. Lots of plants benefit from growing roots over the winter so they can really be ready for spring foliage and summer fruit. 

Today was the first day in long, long string of days that have been wrapped into a long string of weeks that I woke up clear headed and feeling like myself. Can you believe that I had actually forgotten that it used to be normal for me to pop out of bed with curiosity and chaos in my brain? Chronic pain is weird. It manages to both feel more and less terrible than I let on to other people. 

Most of my TMJ pain doesn't feel worth mentioning because most people just want you to tell them when you're better. But it's been 10 months and some days are better but a lot of days are just...the same. Most of the pain isn't very acute. And I sleep through a lot. It's not good sleep and I've been feeling worn down now for so long. On the pain scale where 10 is so bad, all you can do is try to count how many bones there are in your face that are throbbing but you don't have the attention span to finish counting so you just count and get interrupted by the pain, count and get interrupted over and over again, I live at a 2 or a 3. 

Spending 10 months at a 2.5 feels like being a car with the headlights left on. It's not a big problem, but then the battery gets drained and the car isn't as reliable as it used to be. How many times can you leave the lights on and drain the battery before other problems start to arise? Every night for a week? Four out of seven nights for how many months?

It's hard to call myself a morning person anymore. Mornings used to be my best time. And I loved mornings alone best. A secret hour or two before the world breaks in, speeds up, and has you running. But not anymore. There are no secret hours. Just ibuprofen and trying to nurse my way into functioning. I miss the way I used to be. 

I also miss just feeling alright without effort. Do you know how hard I work just to keep my pain at a 2 or 3? I stretch, take magnesium, get jaw massages, wear my night guard, am vigilant about unresolved conflicts that might leave stress hanging out in my jaw, neck, and shoulder. I devote hours each week to basic upkeep (or down keep) of all of the known triggers of TMJ. And I'm grateful that these things help, but I grieve the body I used to have and the time I used to spend on other things. 

I don't really feel like myself lately and I have definitely had less capacity for all of the relationships that require me to do any "heavy lifting". "I'm sorry that you need me to guess what you're feeling and comfort you, my emotional intelligence is at a record low because I haven't slept in 10 months." This has also made me significantly less empathetic. I don't mean to. It's just that the battery is dead. Trust me, I wish I could swim through your emotions with the ease that I used to and help you make sense of them, but I can't. I'll drown because I lack the stamina these days. May we all ask for what we need directly and with kindness. 

Oriah

I've started a coaching program and I think it's the best decision that I've made in a long, long time. Never have I had a group of people hold all of my pain and hopes so gently and so firmly. This week, we met to talk about the book "The Invitation" by Oriah which is an exposition of her poem by the same name. It's staying with me, coming back in parts and pieces. Today, the piece that comes back is this: 

"It doesn't interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy."

I think a lot about that last line: if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I think about the people I have disappointed, the ways I have changed that they have not liked, the ways I have refused to change and so on. I think about my family, my relationship to religion, my career and so on. There is a sea of people's expectations and I am floating on this verse, holding my head up to catch a breath. 

I have this ache to be understood. And it is deep as well as old. As a kid who was often coached and coerced into understanding and extending sympathy to irresponsibly adults in my life without that call for understanding and compassion being reciprocated, I feel this like a wound I am afraid will never close. And I think I'm afraid that it will never get better. Maybe it won't. There are a number of family members who show little interest in understanding me rather than trying to change or educate me into something more palatable. Maybe we will always have this chasm between us. And I think I'm just trying to live my way through the question, "what then?" The answer is, "I will go on."

The Invitation
It doesn't interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn't interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."

It doesn't interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

A Prophecy for the Privileged and Uncompassionate

There will be a day when you lose something--your health or comfort, your wealth or a person important to you. You will wonder if God has turned away. You will be crushed as all people are at one point or another, but it will not feel like an experience common to people. It will feel unique as though no one else could possibly grasp your personal suffering much less stand up under it. 

Everyone in your life familiar with suffering will be tempted to turn away. Many will. Everyone in your life unfamiliar with suffering will definitely pull away and distance themselves, cutting you twice. Those who help the most will be the people you have previously looked down on. It is an old story and it will someday be your story. 

Signed, 

a former pentecostal who still senses things from time to time

My anxiety is so thick and abundant today that I could pack it into jars. It's been like this since the Texas school shooting. I am tired of hearing about how willing people are to sacrifice our students and teachers, my husband, on the alter of their personal brand of freedom. Would my freedom mean anything to me if I have to spend it without him?

Lately, I've  been struggling to not imagine exactly how it would happen. I know that it would have to be in the parking lot or entry way since they have a metal detector at the doorway. I imagine that wherever I am, I will know. I will collapse as if I'm the one shot. Or I won't and it will be a phone call that sends me hurtling to the ground. I don't know how I will get up afterwards. But I've experienced just enough terrible things in my life to know that I will get up. I will enter the empty house. It will stay empty because I will be empty and we will be empty together. 

That's when I'll learn who my real friends and family are. Left to myself, I will probably not leave the house. I will shut the doors against everyone talking about freedom and guns and death and policy and prayers. I will shut the doors on all of the people who are not grieving and I will sit with all of the pieces of the life that we were building stuck at whatever stage he was last there with me for. I will pick up the pieces and sort them, carefully, swollenly, dimly. The only visitors I'll accept are the ones who know better than to tell me what to do or how to be. All advisors will be shown the door. Everyone with an opinion to sell will have to wait until I die too. Because I won't give a damn.

This world will break your heart. 

Over and over again, if you are paying attention, if you are showing up authentically, if you have any amount of hope or faith or love for this planet and its people, you will break. You will not always be fully healed before it starts again. You will not always be healed at all. Because it is big and hurting and so full of pain. 

I am amazed at the human capacity to digest suffering without disintegrating. I am amazed at the ability to disintegrate and then rebuild. But I don't want to be amazed. I want my loved ones to be safe. I want all of their loved ones to be safe. Everyone, everywhere is someone's loved one. And I want better for all of us.

Being alive is harder some seasons than others. For example, this season has felt like one marked by the constant feedback that while I have lots of people that love me, not very many of them are satisfying relationships that actually meet my needs. In so many ways, I did this to myself. I was born a mediator by both nature and nurture, but while I'm trying to help so many people get along and be heard, very few people return the favor. I have a whole list of friends who I no longer go to for advice because I just don't like their methods. 

I was raised in a "speak the truth in love" environment so everyone from my growing up feels like they can comment on how you're living. I had a friend not that long ago try to hold me accountable about a job and a dream that I didn't think they had any business having an opinion about because they weren't around for the critical years and didn't help me pick up the pieces afterwards. They spoke the truth in love, but it felt like taking instead of giving. They took me back to a traumatic place and left me with a heap of their own intellectualism. After that conversation, I resolved to stop talking about that experience with anyone who wasn't THERE. Because I have never met someone who understood that experience from a distance and I am tired of being bulldozed by people's loving truths on the matter.

Another thought that was pervasive in my growing up is that everyone should get an equal say on all topics. And I just don't think that way anymore. For example, if you don't know the difference between race and ethnicity, I don't want to listen to you pontificate on race issues from a false position of authority. It's a waste of both of our time. And that's an unpopular opinion. But not everyone's knowledge is equal and not everyone's experience is relevant all of the time. We'll all take turns sitting down. 

Most of my life, I took turns sitting, listening when I was told to, when I had to, when I had exhausted all of my other options. It's only now in the 3rd decade that I think about what it means to sit down because you want to. I think we are told that we should have something to say so it can be hard to admit when we don't. But I have less and less to say about how other people live their lives and I have become less and less patient with people who mean well be don't do well when trying to build our friendship.

January and February are over. Now the real year can begin. March being my birthday month and the month where my SAD lessens its grip coalesce in such a way that it feels like my own personal New Year. So here I am.

Each year, I learn a little bit more about what depression means to me and become a little more committed to simply saying "no I can't do that because I'm depressed" when it's a bit more than I can handle. There are a lot of things that I have done out of obligation. And sometimes obligation is love. Sometimes it is guilt. Sometimes it is both or neither. Since I like to think of myself as a sincere person, I am trying harder to examine "why am I doing this" and "if I can really give that". 

I do a lot of things to appear normal which is to say to appear not anxious or depressed. Sometimes my only motivation for saying yes to a social engagement is because it sounds like something that someone not suffering from SAD would do. 

Lately, I've been feeling like the worst parts of my parents sometimes take over my thought process. And it's been hard to face those things essentially alone. It's been humbling and not in the quiet dignified sort of way. I feel small and so incapable of giving people the love they deserve. And I wonder if this means that I will never be as known and loved as I want to be and if it's ok to worry about myself like that when I'm so clearly failing people important to me.