Tuesday
Nov012011
Lost & Found
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
I've been so stuck here. I haven't been stuck long, but it's frustrating. I have been here on display for eight years, sharing everything from the happy to the terrifying, but suddenly this sense of display has choked me up somehow. So, I am going to babble on here for a little while today and figure out what's up with me, and then I'm going to hit publish and get on with the business of doing this thing I love.
This is my belly fully extended after eating Girl Guide cookies. I can still see my feet, which means that I'm hawt.
It's not about this space. Not really. I love this space. Blogging is my great passion in this life. I used to feel stupid saying that, like I was that creepy woman who keeps an entire room devoted to her creepy doll collection, but I don't anymore. I love blogging. It is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me.
(I apologize if you're a creepy doll collection person. I'm sure not everyone finds your creepy hobby creepy. I really do, though. Please don't show me pictures of it.)
My entire life has changed because of blogging. It has carried me through depression and anxiety and cancer and the Palinode's broken back and a treacherous work environment and the first days of my sobriety and quitting smoking. Blogging has allowed me to see more of myself than the failed work drone with a creative spirit stifled by fear, with everything stifled by fear, that I used to see.
I am liberated by writing out loud. In the beginning was the Word, and words make things real. They lend shape and texture to previously foggy intuitions. I can point at a particular problem or fear or piece of shame and see it for what it is. Most things are naked emperors. You only need to point it out to strip them of their false power.
And now that I'm writing all of this out, I'm realizing that my feeling unable to share in this space over the last couple of weeks isn't because of this space at all but because I have things that I don't want to talk about. As much as I have completely metamorphosed so much of my dialogue with life over the course of writing this weblog since August of 2003, I still clam up when I come up against a sense of failure.
I don't really believe in failure. I used to. I was a failure, I thought. I was a terrible writer, a terrible life partner, insufficiently sane, lacking in motivation. I couldn't put my finger on any successes, but I could ferret out a failure in the happiest of situations. If I happened to make a good sandwich, it was only in spite of my utter lack of culinary prowess.
A failure, though, is only a particular equation concocted out of the particular minutiae of particular events. A failure is generally described through the very narrow focus of a subjective lens with no eye to the wild dance of reality that came to together to create so much more than that one, undesired outcome.
A sense of failure, more correctly, indicates a lack of proper focus.
So, I was focusing here, on this space, as though this weblog was what was making me feel unable to express myself, because writing out loud is such an incredibly naked experience to visit on oneself, but it turns out that this space isn't at fault at all. I've been misplacing my diagnosis. It's me. I didn't want to tell you that I'm a failure.
I'm not a failure, but that's how I feel right now. I quit drinking, I quit smoking, I've weaned myself off much of my knee-jerk negative thought habits. I've talked about how life is exciting and full of promise and that I feel like a kid again learning everything anew. That's all still holding true, for the most part, but I just didn't bargain for the growing and learning to be so damn sad like it was when I was a kid.
I hated my childhood, or at least most of it. From the time I was about two or three years old, I found the experience of maturing in our society as a thinking, depressive, gender contrarian, pansexual, natural atheist to be a roundly lonely and alienating experience, and I was kind of hoping that the loneliness and alienation part of maturing was over now that I'm in my late thirties. It turns out that this recovering alcoholic is shit out of luck. Growth is hard no matter when you do it.
I didn't want to tell you about it. I didn't want to tell me about it. I am happier and more well-adjusted and experiencing more professional satisfaction than ever before in my entire life, and yet I am also feeling intense loneliness and nostalgic depression.
In so many ways, all these positive life changes I've been making have alienated so very much of my past from me, which, in the large part, is good. I was blinded by negative life clutter before. It's a relief to be relieved of it, but, still, I am also made more alone by it. I have walked away from the majority of the people and places that took up my time over the previous decade in order to take on sobriety and mental health, and now, just over a year later, the fullness of that decision is starting to sink in.
It is wonderful and terrible in equal measure. I feel lighter and more creative than at any other time in my life, but I am heavy with nostalgia for days filled with familiar faces. I am free but burdened, joyful but sad, encouraged but weary.
I am lost, and I didn't want to admit it, and I hated the existence of this blog for making me think about it so much. I didn't want to admit that my seasonal depression is back with a vengeance, that I doubt my abilities in all areas, that I feel unloveable, that I worry about the weakening fibres of my sanity. I didn't want this to be what I handed over to you. I didn't want this to be what I claimed for myself.
The thing is, now that I am admitting to it, the relief is palpable. I think I actually breathed a deep breath for the first time in days.
I am lost right now, it's true, but being lost is not a failure. I am just lost, and that's okay. Being lost is what I have to go through so that I'll know when I've been found again.
----------------------------
PS. Laurie reminded me why I'm here. She doesn't know it yet, but she's why I came back.
This is my belly fully extended after eating Girl Guide cookies. I can still see my feet, which means that I'm hawt.
It's not about this space. Not really. I love this space. Blogging is my great passion in this life. I used to feel stupid saying that, like I was that creepy woman who keeps an entire room devoted to her creepy doll collection, but I don't anymore. I love blogging. It is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me.
(I apologize if you're a creepy doll collection person. I'm sure not everyone finds your creepy hobby creepy. I really do, though. Please don't show me pictures of it.)
My entire life has changed because of blogging. It has carried me through depression and anxiety and cancer and the Palinode's broken back and a treacherous work environment and the first days of my sobriety and quitting smoking. Blogging has allowed me to see more of myself than the failed work drone with a creative spirit stifled by fear, with everything stifled by fear, that I used to see.
I am liberated by writing out loud. In the beginning was the Word, and words make things real. They lend shape and texture to previously foggy intuitions. I can point at a particular problem or fear or piece of shame and see it for what it is. Most things are naked emperors. You only need to point it out to strip them of their false power.
And now that I'm writing all of this out, I'm realizing that my feeling unable to share in this space over the last couple of weeks isn't because of this space at all but because I have things that I don't want to talk about. As much as I have completely metamorphosed so much of my dialogue with life over the course of writing this weblog since August of 2003, I still clam up when I come up against a sense of failure.
I don't really believe in failure. I used to. I was a failure, I thought. I was a terrible writer, a terrible life partner, insufficiently sane, lacking in motivation. I couldn't put my finger on any successes, but I could ferret out a failure in the happiest of situations. If I happened to make a good sandwich, it was only in spite of my utter lack of culinary prowess.
A failure, though, is only a particular equation concocted out of the particular minutiae of particular events. A failure is generally described through the very narrow focus of a subjective lens with no eye to the wild dance of reality that came to together to create so much more than that one, undesired outcome.
A sense of failure, more correctly, indicates a lack of proper focus.
So, I was focusing here, on this space, as though this weblog was what was making me feel unable to express myself, because writing out loud is such an incredibly naked experience to visit on oneself, but it turns out that this space isn't at fault at all. I've been misplacing my diagnosis. It's me. I didn't want to tell you that I'm a failure.
I'm not a failure, but that's how I feel right now. I quit drinking, I quit smoking, I've weaned myself off much of my knee-jerk negative thought habits. I've talked about how life is exciting and full of promise and that I feel like a kid again learning everything anew. That's all still holding true, for the most part, but I just didn't bargain for the growing and learning to be so damn sad like it was when I was a kid.
I hated my childhood, or at least most of it. From the time I was about two or three years old, I found the experience of maturing in our society as a thinking, depressive, gender contrarian, pansexual, natural atheist to be a roundly lonely and alienating experience, and I was kind of hoping that the loneliness and alienation part of maturing was over now that I'm in my late thirties. It turns out that this recovering alcoholic is shit out of luck. Growth is hard no matter when you do it.
I didn't want to tell you about it. I didn't want to tell me about it. I am happier and more well-adjusted and experiencing more professional satisfaction than ever before in my entire life, and yet I am also feeling intense loneliness and nostalgic depression.
In so many ways, all these positive life changes I've been making have alienated so very much of my past from me, which, in the large part, is good. I was blinded by negative life clutter before. It's a relief to be relieved of it, but, still, I am also made more alone by it. I have walked away from the majority of the people and places that took up my time over the previous decade in order to take on sobriety and mental health, and now, just over a year later, the fullness of that decision is starting to sink in.
It is wonderful and terrible in equal measure. I feel lighter and more creative than at any other time in my life, but I am heavy with nostalgia for days filled with familiar faces. I am free but burdened, joyful but sad, encouraged but weary.
I am lost, and I didn't want to admit it, and I hated the existence of this blog for making me think about it so much. I didn't want to admit that my seasonal depression is back with a vengeance, that I doubt my abilities in all areas, that I feel unloveable, that I worry about the weakening fibres of my sanity. I didn't want this to be what I handed over to you. I didn't want this to be what I claimed for myself.
The thing is, now that I am admitting to it, the relief is palpable. I think I actually breathed a deep breath for the first time in days.
I am lost right now, it's true, but being lost is not a failure. I am just lost, and that's okay. Being lost is what I have to go through so that I'll know when I've been found again.
----------------------------
PS. Laurie reminded me why I'm here. She doesn't know it yet, but she's why I came back.
categorized in health and tagged in Seasonal Affective Disorder, blogging, depression, failure, seasonal depression
health and tagged in Seasonal Affective Disorder, blogging, depression, failure, seasonal depression 
Reader Comments (22)
Thank you again for being honest and naked. I have heard it said that not all who wander are lost. I suspect that it might also be true that not all who are lost are in need of finding.
WOW, thank you for opening your heart and allowing us in. You know as I read your words I felt them to the core. Life isn't all flowers and bloody roses is it? I can relate all too well to feeling like an outsider, not quite understanding how to live comfortably within this world.
Change has been a positive for me as well, sobriety has brought about many wonderful things but also times of isloation. When this occurs for me, it helps to find like minded people who can pull me out of my rut and challenge me into finding my serenity.
Right now you're being honest with yourself about your feelings, that's tough and not something which you're naturally comfortable with. It's ultimately a good thing, itchy uncomfortable but a bit of progression.
When you look back over the last year to the times of excitement and happiness you'll notice that your perspective is different than it is today. Is today boring, nothing on the horizon? These times are tough for me too, when I have to simply learn to be with myself quietly and find my happiness without cutting off the world or my emotions.
Don't look too far back or forward, live in today and just be kind to yourself. It's really that simple.
Good to see you back. I do the same thing. Putting a voice to this is daunting
I've been feeling a lot of this too for the past couple of months. I don't tend to talk about it because I'm a wallower, but I know some of where you're coming from. I certainly understand resenting your blog since if all that occupies your mind is what you don't want to write about or face, well....yeah. Glad writing this helped give you some relief.
I wonder if you realize how important your thoughts are to my well being. somedays, I am amazed at how relevant your blogging is to me. today, I think it is a life saver. (seriously, very seriously.) thanks x1000 ,E. I really needed that today.
Yeesh, 'tis the season. I just wrote about this yesterday. Lost is a good way to describe the feelings and I wondered if I should have been writing about it at all. Thank you for this and for sending me over to Laurie's post too. This sounds awful, but it does help to know that I am not alone in feeling like this and that being said...please let this pass by us all sooner rather than later!!
There have been so many times when your posts find a way to fully describe something I've been feeling but haven't been able to nail. I think I'm going through a similar period right now where I feel lost. I hope it's not a long journey before either of us feel back on the right track.
"I am liberated by writing out loud. In the beginning was the Word, and words make things real. They lend shape and texture to previously foggy intuitions. I can point at a particular problem or fear or piece of shame and see it for what it is. Most things are naked emperors. You only need to point it out to strip them of their false power.... A sense of failure, more correctly, indicates a lack of proper focus."
Really???
Sometimes your writing is so over-the-top freaking fecking fantastic, I am left speechless after reading it. This entire piece was stunning and so close to the bone, it left the marrow aching.
I hope you never doubt that what you write about what you feel matters to the world. Once again, I am reminded that I'm not the only one who doubts, who flounders, who struggles. There's a very strong case for creative individuals being more susceptible to depression. Not because they're missing something or they just don't "get it," but because the ability to create fosters the capacity to question. The tendency for depression comes when we aren't able to come up with adequate answers to those questions. Wrapping my head around this has been encouraging. Whenever I start to berate myself for not being able to just soldier on, I try to think about how the ability to feel this bad lets me create great things. Would I truly want to throw out the baby with the bath water?
Thanks again.
And while you're lost or found there are those who understand and who appreciate your voice, even or especially during those times when you don't feel it.
...thanks for the reminder. i'm having one of those days and sometimes just hearing somebody else work out their own not entirely different mess and lostness is hugely, enormously comforting.
you are heard. appreciated. and no, not a failure. just seeking focus.
Hey Seasonal Depression Buddy!
Life is a miracle every day and then there's the human condition and life is a pure nightmare and it might be a blessing if the Earth just fell into the Sun. That statement sounds absurd but I guess I wanted to say--well, it's really HARD. Living is the hardest thing.
Also, you have had a loss of a loved one. Besides the season, that really affects how the world looks for a long, long time.
Sorry you feel lost and a failure but you will find yourself and you aren't.
Seasonal depression is hitting me hard too. I hate it. So I can empathize.
I'm so grateful that you started blogging because it means that I got to know you, to meet you, to hang out with you. You are amazing and lovable and even my then-three-year-old could sense it in you, which is why she knew she had to hug you right away.
Wow, nice writing, chiquita, and so so true.
Also, I suspect a little bit of depression now and then is more normal than not, for any thinking person. It's just that a lot of people ignore it and keep busy, refuse to allow their feelings expression, or can't articulate it as others can. For those who can let it be what it is without berating themselves, maybe it's natural to come out the other side of it eventually.
Not that I know. I just wonder.
I can't wait to see your sweet face. There's so much begging to be said.
....starting with, "It's not just you."
Some of my friends who don't blog (yes I still have some of those) really don't get it. And I have let go of trying to explain it to them. But you, here, have put it so beautifully into words. I. and I am sure many many others, read along with my soul repeating "yes...yes...yes...YES!" with each passing passage.
Thank you for your honesty and your bravery (for it is bravery) and your willingness to be so naked here, before us. It makes a difference. Your words make a difference. You make a difference. You are a pond-tossed pebble and the ripples expand ever outward.
My blog is precious to me because it feels like the only part of my life that I fully own, and yes, it is the place I claim the dark and the light of my life.
There has been a heaviness in the air, despite the brilliant blue skies and bright yellow leaves in my corner of the world. Everything looks fine but feels broken. I am fearful that my depression, which has been under control for a while, is going to rise out of the dark and flatten me.
I don't feel lost so much as I feel devalued.
I'm sorry you're in such a dark place. I have nothing to offer except to say you're not alone, and that I think what you've accomplished and overcome is inspirational.
It's hard enough being honest with ourselves, telling our own truths to ourselves, let alone exposing them to the critical gaze of the world. That level of vulnerability takes guts, and I go back and forth about whether I have the guts to do it. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I withdraw. It flows. And it's okay.
Today I had the guts. And so did you. So high motherfucking five, today we beat the monsters in our heads back.
xoxo
Aw. This is how you're doing. Wasn't an easy breezy question that I asked you via an email. You should have replied, "READ MY BLOG, DO-DO." I'm so inspired by your honesty, your willingness to share so much, your writing ability, your creativity, your strength and courage. I could go on.
I'm "heavy with nostalgia", too. It's been a few intense years for me—I'm 45—not sure if "the change" or hormones are contributing to my situation.
Being lost is definitely not synonymous with failure. It's synonymous with being human. And you're a COOL human. :)
Did you know that sometimes you say things that are just perfect? Like this: Being lost is what I have to go through so that I'll know when I've been found again.
That is a good thing to keep reminding yourself, for anyone, no matter what you are going through if you are feeling lost and alone. And really, you aren't alone. You have us.
I know this is a personal post and there may be a lot of factors I am missing, but I am wondering, what with all of the HUGE changes you have made in your life in the past year or so, if you are feeling like "What's next?" Because personally, I know sometimes contentedness can also feel like just waiting for the next big thing to come along - the next big change, the next big hurdle to overcome. As nice as it might be, sometimes contentedness and happiness can be frightening, especially if you are pessimistic like I tend to be (and especially this type of year) when you just feel like you are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Well, let's write our ways through it. You do so well at that already.
Thank you for this. I adore you. xo
Yeah...I think you're totally awesome.
I don't know what's going with this year, but Fall has been particularly hard on mental health this time around. For me I think it's because so much awesome has happened to Chris and I in such a short amount of time that I don't know how to deal with it. I feel guilty for being happy in a new job and a new home. I keep waiting for the thing that will take the happy away. That monster has been coming around since 2005. It seems ridiculous to think he's not going to show his ugly mug this year. Also, we don't have friends here. We suck at making friends. But writing this all down makes us sane.