The ongoing journey - religion this time

I was thinking tonight about my journey with Christianity and thinking more about what it was about it that hurt me so much and turned me right off.  One thought that came to mind tonight is that I always felt like I was being set up to fail.  It seemed to me that the expectations and the way of being that to me was part of being Christian were impossible to meet.  And so, I always felt like a failure.

The thing for me is that I have enough trouble feeling like I am good enough, that I am valuable etc...  I realize now that going to church and having Christianity as a big part of my life felt like just one more way that I was failing, that I wasn't good enough.  That hurt me a lot.  And made it impossible for me to keep being a part of it.  I could barely cope with the things I had to do that made me feel like a failure everyday.  Church was one thing I had some control over and could let go, so I did.

My understanding of Christianity has not changed in the intervening years.  And so, while I feel better and stronger now, most of the time, I can't make myself believe or think that being a part of a church again will be anything but pain, hurt, disappointment and failure.

Something about

I was away for work to a fairly small community the last couple of days.  There's something about getting away, even when it is only for an day and a half, and when you don't sleep well.  There's something energizing about meeting other people.  They see the world in a different way and always add perspective or food for thought to my world. This trip was for a work meeting with a number of farmers from around this community.  They certainly see the world in a unique way, but one that for them, totally makes sense.

I'm exhausted and invigorated all at the same time.

Spinning

So much emotion
My mind is spinning
Out of control
Sadness
It seems never ending
Thoughts of having
To put on a happy face
Where to find the energy
Why so sad
How to comprehend
Where did that come from
Why now
Couldn't you wait
One step forward
Two steps back
Or is that the other
Way around
Disjointed
Jumping thoughts
Can't settle down
Spinning
Vortex
Sucked in to it
Why the same again
Is it me
What is it about me
Again really
Wasn't I done
Hadn't I dealt with that
Saw it coming
Couldn't hang on
Why didn't I try
Take care of me
It's the only way
I didn't mean it
How could you take it that way
Can't you see
Relax
Distract
Ignore
Too many thoughts
Around and around and around
Did some things right

Anger and Sadness

Tonight I am angry, really angry.  I won't reveal why as it affects another person way too much.  I have been feeling so sad and down for awhile now that in some ways anger feels good.  Sadness takes so much energy just to deal with.  Anger provides energy, at least in the short term.  I am sure once the anger fades I will feel sadness over the situation that caused it, but for now it's nice to feel differently anyhow.

Awkward Moments

Today at work it came up with someone I don't know very well that I had been off sick for a week.  As we all do when we don't want to catch something she started moving away.  All I said was I wasn't contagious.

What I really wanted to say was that no, you can't catch this.  But, it affects you.  It affects everyone in some way.  She may not know other people dealing with depression, or she might.  But, she knows me.  She may well be ignorant of the fact that she knows someone with depression.  I wanted to say, see my invisible struggles, see me, see what I go through.  No, I don't have a cold or the flu or a broken bone or anything you can see.  I am struggling though.  And my struggles are no less valid or challenging than anyone else's, even if you can't see them.  Even if I choose in that moment to keep them hidden.

My sister

My sister is amazing.  I have been having a really tough week this last week.  Today I phoned her out of the blue and asked to come over.  She said yes.  Now, this may not seem amazing to some of you, but my sister had a baby 5 days ago.  Despite her learning how to manage with a toddler and a new baby, she was so supportive today.  She wanted to ensure I was ok.  We had a really good talk, for which I am grateful.

We talked about sadness.  We talked about not having to feel happy all the time, no matter if you have depression or not.  We talked about some things that she has observed in my life of late.  Frankly we talked. After 3 days of not leaving my place, it was nice to get out and to talk about stuff.  Real stuff, not surface stuff.  It was a talk I needed.   A place to articulate a lot of what has been going on in my head.

And, well my nephews are fabulous creatures so hanging out with them never hurts.

Sadness

My dad phoned this morning to tell me he is there for me if I need him.  While we were talking he asked me if I was running away from things right now.  When talking to him, I said maybe a little.  When I started to really think about it, I realized I am not running away.  That is why this is so hard.

What I am doing is learning to make room for sadness in my life.  There is nothing wrong with feeling sad.  It is a normal emotion, but it is one that I have never made room for.  I have always just ignored it, even when the situation called for it.  I never wanted the attention on me, so I always said I was fine.  When people are dealing with their own things, this answer passes by.

The truth is though, I am sad.  I am sad for things I have lost.  I am sad for things long since gone and sad for things that have happened recently.  I feel like I have lost so much in so many ways because of the depression.  This makes me feel sad.  I have never really grieved the loss of people or dreams or innocence in my life.  I feel that sadness now also.  It is overwhelming.  But it is important.  I won't ever be able to really feel sad about current stuff until I deal with the old stuff because it will otherwise always feel overwhelming.  And so, I feel very sad these days.

The thing is to let myself feel the sadness, know it's ok and then find a way to deal with it.  Some things I will always feel sad about, but they are not things that I am going to think about all the time.  Right now the sadness is big, but very little of it is about the here and now.  Dealing with the big sadness should let me focus again on the here and now.  Learning how to feel sadness, learning to make space for it in my life is so important though.  There will be other things in my life that make me sad.  I need to make space for that and not ignore it.

Disappointment

Sometimes doing the right thing for me is terribly hard.  Today it means not going to a friends' event, even though I really want to be there.  There has been a lot of stuff going on of late and I have been pushing through.  Today my brain said no, stop, you are done pushing.

I have spent a lot of the day sleeping.  I hope it is restorative sleep.  One of the things that has been going on lately is learning to be sad.  So often I mask sadness with anxiety or anger.  Those emotions feel like they provide energy, and they feel a lot less vulnerable to me.  Sadness takes energy and it makes me feel vulnerable, like if someone knows I am sad then they could hurt me.  Sadness feel weak to me, whereas anger feels strong.  One some level though, I know that feeling emotions, whatever they are takes courage for me.

Feeling the sadness is hard because feeling sadness about current things feels leads to old sadness that I have never felt and it feels overwhelming.  It sometimes feels that if I start to feel sad, I might never stop.  The trick is to find ways to deal with bite size chunks of sadness.  I'm working on it.

There are other things going on also.  My sister had her second child the other day.  I love having nephews, it's an awesome experience, and I'm totally in love with both of them.  One some level I think I've always had it in the back of my mind that I might have kids of my own someday, in the traditional marriage with the 2.2 kids, the dog and the white picket fence.  This is not me, and I know it.  Letting go of the last of the hope, as unrealistic as it was, is something I am also trying to do.  Realizing that who I am excludes this life is ok, but comes with a sense of loss.  Finding myself and being myself is super important, but not all of it is easy.  Decidedly some hard stuff too.

Work has also been rather challenging of late.  I have quickly learned that if there is a lot of work to do, I am fine, but the interpersonal interactions are hard, it struggle a lot more.  I have been fairly effectively ignoring it for awhile, but I have been ignoring it and pretending it was affecting me.  But it has been.

And, I am wondering if my medication isn't working how it should be.  I've been feeling very agitated, frustrated and angry of late.  I really thought it was emotional, but then someone said to me that when she was on anti-depressants this happened when her dose was too strong.  I am going to call the doctor on Monday and see about this.

I am thankful to be in a position in life where I can take a day off of life once in awhile.  I only wish, this time it hadn't come when I had plans I really wanted to be at.

Running Away

Today I felt the urge to run away.  From my job, from depression, from anything hard in my life.  Just run away from it all.  The urge is familiar to me.  I have spent a lot of time in my life hopping around, job to job particularly.  Some of this was because jobs got boring, but often it was because I didn't know how to cope with the situation at hand so I left.  Just having the urge to run made me realize that I need to sort through some stuff.  It also scared me.  Anything that feels like depression scares me as I don't want to go back to that place where life is awful, all the time.

The thing I have come to learn is that some situations you need to leave.  Absolutely, positively without a doubt.  Leaving my last job was exactly the right thing to do.  The environment there was toxic for me and no matter how much I tried I don't think it would have been a lot better.  But often running away doesn't really change things.  When I haven't changed then changing the situation hasn't helped in the long run.  In the short run it is great, but old patterns die hard.

Work was hard emotionally today.  So I want to run. The thing is that it is a good place to work for the most part.  There are some dynamics right now that are challenging, but the project will be over in a few months.  Is it worth the whole upheaval of running and finding something new for that?  No.  But dealing with things is hard and tiring also.  Finding new ways to manage and cope is tough and requires so much energy (which might explain why I have been feeling so tired lately).  I don't like difficult emotions, but then again who does?

The shrinking bubble

I was talking tonight at group about how for the last over year and a half I have really been insulating myself in a bubble in order to heal.  I've been focusing on that and letting other things fall off to the side.  This has been good for the most part, and definitely something I needed to do.  But, I said something about the bubble starting to feel small.  As I said it, I realized how true it was.

I've known this for awhile I guess.  But much of it came to light for me this week when I exchanged some difficult emails with a friend.  And so, I now am more aware that I need to get back into the world.  One of the biggest challenges I see is finding a way to integrate some of my life before with my life now.  I was hiding from myself and doing everything I could to be someone else.  But, not everything was bad.  There are good people in my life from then.  Good people that I don't want out of my life.  And yet, I can't have them in my life in the same way.

It dawns on me as I write this that I am scared.  Scared that being around the same people will put me in a place to continue the same old habits that are bad for me.  Scared that I won't be able to find different ways to relate to people that I have known for awhile.  Scared of not being able to cope or manage or be ok.  This is likely not fair to those people, but it is how I feel.  It makes me sad also to think that I am scared of relating to some people that have always been such good friends.

As hard as it may be, I am not willing to let some people go without trying to find a way through this.  I need to have patience with myself and ask my friends to do the same.  I am learning new ways of being and relating, new ways that are so much healthier for me.