Internal struggles
I don’t understand why I am feeling so overwhelmed with negativity and gloom.
This weekend I knew why – I intentionally didn’t take my antidepressants. I realize I do that when I am having a really hard day… somehow like my way of flipping the bird to life. I’m depressed now? Oh really? But also I think it is my release into darkness. It’s like every few months I need to descend into the darkness, to touch my toes to the water and remember how heavy and oppressive it all is. Then I start feeling light-headed, extremely sensitive and paranoid, realize I’ve let myself go too long, and start taking my pills again. I wait for the normalcy to creep back into my head, and step away from the ledge for another two months.
But it’s been two days now, two days of pills. I am no longer feeling light-headed and the sensitivity is fading… but the darkness is not. I still feel like crying. So now I have to start working to pick it apart and figure out why… and what I can do about it.
I am searching for answers. Not from the universe, since those simply cannot be answered, but from myself. I’m not even sure what I am searching for, really. A direction, perhaps. I sit down with my Self and ask, What do you want? I know what it wants – and I know that right now I cannot have it. So what do I want in the meantime? What else will fulfill me, strengthen me, encourage me? What else will put the fire inside me? I am searching for answers, but they are muddied. I do not know.
I am reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I decided finally to try it, since everyone was talking about it… and I love it. She writes about her own search for meaning and purpose, her conversations with her Self, her healing of the heart. That is what I want. Not the same – I could not survive an Ashram in India – but I need some soul healing, I need to find out what it is that defines me, fulfils me… without children.
I feel like I’ve been knocked back to the year after graduation, when suddenly you are aimless, searching not just to fill your time but your life purpose, afraid to commit for fear it is the wrong path. I was there once. I decided, I chose. Only now I am denied. Not right now, life says to me. Choose again. But I don’t want to. I carefully weighed all options and chose this life, this path, because it was what I wanted most of all. How can you backtrack on that? How can you fully commit to a secondary purpose? Even worse, a temporary secondary purpose as I sit and wait.
This has been a very large, very hard lesson in patience, in living in the present. In some ways I am grateful for the wisdom. But there is a fear that floats in my head that my life will not move forward until I learn this lesson… that somehow my inability to let go is what is holding me back.
“Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future,” Elizabeth writes in her book.
I think maybe I need some yoga.
It’s a good book isn’t it? Somehow you have people that absolutely loathe it (it’s all about HER! Well duh ..) and people that take it at face value, get what they need from it and love it.
I’m one of the latter. Of course the book is self-indulgent in that it is only about what Liz wants .. that’s what an autobiography is about. But the insights she writes down confirmed a lot of choices I took in the last couple of years and helped me realize that I am walking down the right track.
Living in the now, generally, is what is the hardest for me. It seems such a simple Buddhist notion but I find myself constantly looking either ahead or back, worrying about things that I cannot change. It can be exhausting and serves no purpose, because it is wasted energy. I KNOW that, consciously, but doing something about it is another matter.
What helped me is a “mantra” if you will that my husband lives by whenever he starts to fret about things:
– Can you change it? No? Then let go, let go, let go.
– Yes? Then go do so right away.
It sounds very simple. It actually is very simple. But it might not be applicable to your situation. The things I usually fret about are small things, while for you, your life is more or less put on hold each and every time.
I always say, go chase your dreams, for they will not catch up with you. Seems to me you’ve done a damn lot of chasing in the past years and somehow, indeed, you’ve been denied constantly. I can imagine how that wears away at a person and I can also imagine how you wonder how you can commit to something else in the meantime. Nothing compares, in a way.
Bah, I’m rambling and that probably doesn’t help much, does it?
I think you’ve done your fare share of living in the now, for what it’s worth. It’s not as if you haven’t learned that lesson yet. It’s just that at time, it’s so damn tiresome and unfair that the one thing you want keeps eluding you, while it seems so simple for others. And if that makes you depressed, I think you are completely entitled to feel that really once in a while. I just hope it wears off again and leaves you with more strenght to continue.
*big big big hug and thinking of you guys daily*
Mmm … ‘living in the now’. Can’t do it. Not yet. Not till I know what’s going to happen in the next few months. I haven’t been able to live in the now for about three years. I’m constantly waiting to see what happens next, whether the “next” will be better than the “now”. But maybe in a few months I will have to live with the now. Maybe there won’t be the next. Maybe I’ll need to find out what fulfills me and defines me .. maybe there won’t be any living children.
Yes, Yoga may help. I was doing Bikram yoga every day, then I had my ectopic and now am back – and will go every day again. It is amazing and life changing. Really. Taking those 90 minutes out every day changed everything. Try it, you have nothing to loose. BIKRAM. x Think of you during your hard times, I just wish you were local so I could come over and give you a hug.
Exactly!
Before I got pg, I was totally engaged in my studies, loving the working through of ideas, the focus on my subject. Since I lost the boys, I’ve struggled to go back to my studies, to find meaning there. Intellectually, I know it’s important, and I will likely engage with it again, even if in a different way. It’s just a horrible feeling right now, to be in flux so much until I find myself again.
Your posts lately have been so thoughtful, and echo my own process in many ways. Thank you for sharing them. I know you’ll find your way soon.
Beautifully and poignantly written. Every month, after another disappointment, I tell myself that I am going to find a way to have a life while going through IF, but it just isn’t realistic. Your whole existence gets tied up in it and the only way to break free of it all is to really let it go and move on. Not something I am ready to do, not something I am forced to do just yet. Until we either conquer this mountain, or finally discover that it cannot be conquered, moving forward is impossible. How can you be on two paths at once?
Thank you for sharing your story and your feelings so openly. Good luck to you on your journey. :)
Beautiful post Nat… you really got me thinking. I will have to look into that book, it sounds like I would really like it.
I’m sorry for the darkness but I am inspired by your post to find meaning. I’ve been doing the same thing lately (obviously for very different reasons, but all the same, to some extent… on the same path)
I really want to check this book out. Thanks for the idea.
And I’m sending you love and light.
Very, very deep thinking. Your struggle is palpable. You mentioned a long time ago donating your time to take photos of stillborns for greiving parents. You’ve mentioned wanting to develop materials for those experiencing pregnancy loss. You’ve mentioned wanting to be there for your coworker when she finally needs to talk about what happened. all of these things are ways to attempt to take control of what has happened to you..to tell the universe or life that you’ll take what happened and turn it around and use it for some good. It may not be the path you chose..but it ultimately will be your path. It doesn’t lessen the anger..and it may not make you any more patient. But that anger will drive you. And your activities will fill you. I admire your honesty. Even in your anger and despair you are turing the mirror on your current situation and you are striving to live in the present. There are many, many, many people who could never do that. You’ll stumble and have days and weekends and weeks when you don’t want to, but I just know if you are strong enough to write this post, you are strong enough to step forward and do it. I think that is the ultimate fuck you and “finger flip off” to the universe. Keep on trucking.
It takes 2-3 days of no pills to radically drop your blood levels. It is then that you will feel bad. It will take 2-3 WEEKS of not missing a single pill before you are level again.
you know i think that some times for me any way that i skip pills purposely almost as a way of punishing myself for mental instability. then i have little panic attacks from worrying about missing my pills- i wish you health and happiness
Have you thought about maybe adopting a baby? I know it isnt the same as having one of your own, but it doesn’t mean you have to leave the path of wanting children. I’m sorry if this comment is rude, I didn’t mean it to be.