So, some shit happened to me earlier this week. Yucky stuff, that I was having some difficulty dealing with. I didn’t (and still don’t) know how to deal with it. I was crying, there were puffy eyes, snotty nose and all in all it wasn’t pretty.
Stephen Fry says about depression that some days are fine and sunny, and other days are overcast and rainy and the thing about it is that you don’t really have a lot of control over that, however you can have an umbrella which will help you to deal with it. At least, that was my interpretation of what he said. My apologies if I got that wrong. But it still works.
So I’m going through this crying thing, my brain is running around and around in tight little circles, not getting anywhere, freaking out because I didn’t have the answer and everything I could think of made it worse and…. you get the idea.
Finally a voice in the back of my head said “you know, there are options here. You don’t have to deal with it, you can opt out”. Because this voice was calm, the frenzied circling stopped while I considered this. Opting out, whether permanently or temporarily, wasn’t necessarily the best answer, but it was an answer. And just like it’s really difficult to start writing a letter or a story on a completely blank page, if you just write something, your brain can latch onto that, and change it.
In my case, my brain latched onto this option, and considered it. In this case, I decided against that option (obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this now, and you wouldn’t be reading it).
Once that decision had been made, the calm spread to the rest of my brain. I’d removed one variable in this equation. I’d started the story. I’d found the umbrella. I’d decided to stay.
The subsequent decision of “I don’t know how to deal with this right now, so I’m going to just wait until I have further information and deal with things as they appear” was relatively easy, after that first decision – to stay – had been made.
So, metaphorically speaking, I put up the umbrella, and stepped out into the rain. I may not be dancing in it just yet, but I’m able to walk through it. And the next couple of days, it cleared up, and the sun is peeking out through the clouds again. No, I still don’t have a surefire solution for the initial shit, but I’m doing a Scarlett O’Hara… I’m thinking about that tomorrow. It’ll come, I have faith.
Falling Thought Leaves 