That which I am

Back in January, I fell apart. Not for the first time, and I’m guessing not for the last, but it was a more dramatic and obvious sort of disintegration than I’d ever experienced before. There was a complete vicissitude in my thinking, my coping abilities. Depression has been with me in various forms for years, but this was the first time I ever reacted to it with irresponsibility (I got in my car without telling anyone and drove three states away), and seemingly irrevocable despondency (for real? I don’t know, but it seemed easier than waking up the next morning). In Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote of her depression: “I wonder if any of them can tell from just looking at me that all I am is the sum total of my pain, a raw woundedness so extreme that it might be terminal…what if I am stuck down here for good?” For GOOD. It was one of the most terrifying concepts I could imagine -- being forever trapped in a hell not necessarily of my own chemical devising, but one contributed to by the very real situation I was facing at home. A failure of my life plan. A hell that no doctor, no meds, no amount of meditation of yoga or prayer would improve. I sat in my car at the edge of the ocean in a little town far, far north of where I live, watching the shadows in the gloaming (were those angels or devils I saw beckoning?), thinking about what a fucking hot mess my life had become.

Drove home.

Intervention of sorts.

A week in the Caymans.

Yoga.

Tweaking of the meds.

Sleep. More yoga.

Stillness.

Buddha.

Spring.

And now, for the first time in almost a year, spaciousness.

Look. This is your world! You can't not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don't hesitate - look! Open your eyes. Don't blink, and look, look - look further. — Trungpa