Fact about me: in the gray cold of winter, I cannot recall the golden warmth of summer. I am one of those people who is mired in my current condition, feeling as though it were always so.
Well, at least that is true when it comes to negative conditions. I was always cold, always sad, always sick, always broke, always lonely, always tired. If I am thirsty, the glass is always half empty. No doubt, this is caused by a depressive-type personality. I believe I was born with some kind of gene that makes me lean to the dark side. My natural mom, who died when I was two months old, experienced, or so I gleaned from the stories I was told, anxiety and depression to the point of seeking professional treatment. Since she died when I was so young, my own experiences with depression were not learned from her and I never knew others in my childhood world who were plagued with similar emotional disorders, so I am left to assume there is a genetic reason for my easy fall into hopelessness. With the exception of the last few years of my marriage, these downward spirals rarely last long, and have never hampered my ability to work and deal with everyday life. I just get blue. And that is where I have been since mid-November. After several sad and worrisome occurrences, I became stuck in a deep, dark funk.
In my last few posts I documented some of the happenings in my life that swept me from the hopeful world I was inhabiting. I limped through the holidays feeling sad, tired and overwhelmed. I greeted January, my busiest work time of the year, with no energy and worked long hours with no enthusiasm. By mid-month, I succumbed to a bad cold. Severe congestion and uncontrollable coughing zapped what was left of my strength and interrupted my sleep. Not being able to take time off to rest and get well, I kept moving forward through days that seemed to last weeks.
While I was struggling with my declining health, my 14 year-old dog Winnie came down with upper respiratory and sinus infections, resulting in a constant bloody nasal discharge. My big, affectionate protector was unbearably weak, looking at me with sad eyes that begged for relief. A massive antibiotic treatment failed to help her and she steadily worsened during one very long night, leaving my vet to believe her infections were caused by cancerous conditions. With no hope for my gentle giant to get better especially considering her age, my man and I made the sad, but compassionate, decision to end her suffering. Unable to stop my flow of tears, I took the day off work and buried my dear old friend. Hours spent crying just worsened my condition and my cold degraded to the bronchitis from which I am still trying to recover.
January was a bad month. And, yet, in spite of the work, the illness, the loss of my dog, I ended the month feeling a little more hopeful than how I started the new year. I cannot explain why. Perhaps, it is the ever returning encouragement of spring. An unusually warm January brought about an explosion of flowers, leaves and green grass fooling us into believing that winter had passed. But even now, when the unseasonable heat has given way to more typical winter temperatures, when I am back to covering my more delicate plants and wrapping the outside faucets to protect them from freezing, I still feel like the world and I have recovered from the dark sadness of winter.
It is now as I lift my head above the clouds of despair that I can honestly see my tendency to give up when I am feeling tired and overwhelmed. I went through some rough, sad times last year and, overall, I believe I did well. But, when I become physically tired to the point that I can no longer find a way to rest, I lose my resolve to stay positive and upbeat. The answer is, obviously, to not get so rundown that I cannot get up again. Easier written than done.
Life can be so demanding. Work needs to be done, people need to be cared for, problems need to solved, accidents happen, people and pets die, things stop working, illness attacks. All this stuff happens on no one’s schedule. We try and try, but we cannot schedule life. There are days without enough hours. There are nights without sleep. And, those are the times that sink me. I know this, but can I prevent being capsized by the unexpected? I think all the junk of life has a cumulative effect, like a boat with a small leak. Just a little water onboard, then a little more, after awhile the water is ankle deep, then knee deep and then, too late, the ship is going down.
I thought age would make me stronger, but it hasn’t. Perhaps a little wiser, but definitely not stronger. I may be better at distinguishing the little annoyances from the bigger problems, but I don’t know that I am any better at solving the dilemmas that sucker punch me in the gut.
I’ve noticed that when life gets difficult and I get tired, confusion sets in. My house gets out of order, nothing can be found on my desk, my purse is a black hole, my car looks like a homeless camp. Everything gets out-of-hand. There is not enough time or energy to do anything about the chaos, so the confusion worsens. Places that should be my refuge fill me with guilt. I am there now. I have been working a great deal, much has been happening, I have been physically ill and weary, and my life feels like a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing. What time I have is spent keeping my clients organized while my own life feels misplaced, disorganized and bewildering. And it is in the state of confusion that I came upon this quote which gave me hope:
One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star: Friedrich Nietzsche
Should that be true, there is great hope for me and on that I am relying until something better comes along.
