I am in that mood that sometimes claims me, lonely and abject and liable to start needling and provoking in a wrong headed bid for reassurance that I am not the wretched soul it feels to me that I am in this moment. This mood, the one that sits in my chest choking off my air, originates within me, not without, and so I alone am responsible for containing it, riding it out. I have let it run amok before, unleashed upon those in closest proximity, with disastrous results. So I am trying to stay conscious this time, to manage it, rock with it, let it leak away.
I called my friend. I told her just how I am feeling, how this mood has caused me problems in the past, problems that remained long after the mood, the abject miserable piteous self-loathing, had run its course, leaving in its wake new and concrete reasons for pain. She said, Well it's good that you recognize what you are feeling and maybe you should write it out to help you get beyond it sooner. So I am. I am writing it out.
Riding it out in that way.
And I'm listening, riding it out with you.
ReplyDeleteThank you for being here, Elizabeth. It means a lot.
DeleteGod, Angella. Me too! I swear I am starting to believe that we are controlled by forces that science has yet to even begin to acknowledge, much less understand. There are too many of us who seem to enter and leave similar states of emotion at the same time.
ReplyDeleteWe shall hang in, right?
Mary, we shall indeed hang in. I will think of you and breathe in and breathe out and know that this too will pass, and that we are holding hands. You know, it really helps.
Deleteyes. too, too familiar. i am curious how you learn to ride it out, what you choose to hang on to, to distract, to move outside yourself...
ReplyDeletethank you for putting this into words you are not alone in this.
Susan, i once heard someone say "just rock with it" to another person in mental distress, and it struck me somehow. So at the worst, I think of myself huddled in a corner, knees to my chest, arms around myself, rocking and rocking until the ache of it passes. If I can muster the momentum, then I might put on my clothes and go alone to a movie, where i can sit in that dark place for a couple of hours with my brain hijacked by the action on screen. But mostly, i am too ransacked to move. So i imagine the rocking and try to stay silent because anything that comes out of my mouth is likely to be provocative and unhelpful to the cause. Thank you for being here, too.
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