Bella went to heaven today.
Now her worry wrinkles will unfold.
She will take well-earned peaceful naps
and wake the angels with her snoring.
She will bow down and wiggle her butt
in the universal “let’s play” gesture,
And other dog angels will tussle with her
in fields of sweet grass and flowers.
She will live forever in our hearts,
her soulful gaze will touch our thoughts.
Her memory will always bless us,
just as she did in life.
Rest in peace, Miss Bella.
Today is National Voter Registration Day in the US. Are you registered?
To check your voter registration, go to https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote . There you can “learn if you’re eligible to vote, how to register, check, or change your information,” and find the deadline to register to vote in your state.
Elections have consequences. Have your say in the nation’s future!
[Flashback #4 is my re-posting from a blog I wrote several years ago about my struggles with depression. My purpose in revisiting the “old” me is to remind myself and any others who care to read, to “claim the positive energy that is available to each of us for our own benefit and for the benefit of others.”]
This is a post from July 19, 2012:
“Things are only impossible until they’re not.”
~ Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
I came across a website the other day, DepressionTribe, which is a community site for people who are affected by depression. The philosophy of the site is that “individuals become empowered to help themselves and others when they feel a part of something larger.” The site allows members to create profile pages and share stories, photos, videos, music and artwork; to chat, participate in groups, and leave comments; and provides a venue for creating personal blogs. I haven’t poked around the site enough to make a recommendation, but it looks interesting.
While reading some of the members’ posts on the site, I was reminded of how destructive depression can be. I didn’t think I would ever need to be reminded, since I was living it day in and day out for so long. But reading about the hopelessness, the fear, the frustration and the hurt made me realize how fortunate I am to be experiencing a reprieve right now. I am riding a wave at present, enjoying life and appreciating all that I have been blessed with. I’ve come through to the other side. I have survived. Again.
My experience is that depression is a cyclical thing in my life. While I try not to dwell on it, I do not think I have seen the last of it. There has been a shift for me, though. I am choosing to savor my current contentment without constantly looking over my shoulder and wondering when I will be hit by despair once again. I am living life in the moment for a change. And I am continuing to make gains in physical and mental health that I hope will help me down the road when the wave crashes again. Maybe I won’t fall so far next time, maybe I won’t stay down so long. Maybe I’ll be able to remember that I was healthy and happy not so long ago and that will give me more strength or more hope for seeing it through yet again.
Life isn’t perfect right now. There’s that whole nagging issue of having no clue as to how I am going to make it financially in the future. But otherwise, things are better than I thought I could ever expect. I am reminded of the four minute mile. People used to think that running a mile in under four minutes was a physical impossibility for humans. Runners came close to completing the mile run in that amount of time, but no one could break through that four minute barrier.
In May of 1954, runner Roger Bannister did the impossible. He completed the mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, disproving the notion that it couldn’t be done. And soon after, other runners began beating the four minute mile as well. What had seemed to be a physical barrier had perhaps been more of a psychological barrier instead.
When we’re depressed, it sometimes seems impossible that we will ever be happy, that life will ever be worthwhile. I have proven to myself that that does not have to be the case. We all have different circumstances, of course, and some of us have greater burdens to overcome than others, but a better life is possible if we don’t give up.
The barrier has been broken for me, and I am doing everything I can to ingrain that into my mind. The theme from Rocky is running through my head, and I feel all inspired to go running now. But I think I’ll settle for a walk to the mailbox.
One barrier at a time.
Maggie
Day 29 of NaPoWriMo. The prompt, edited for succinctness:
For poet William Wordsworth, a poem was the calm after the storm – an opportunity to remember and summon up emotion, but at a time and place that allowed the poet to calmly review, direct and control those feelings. A somewhat similar concept is expressed through the tradition of philosophically-inclined poems explicitly labeled as “meditations,” …
Today, I’d like to challenge you to blend these concepts into your own work, by producing a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully.
Not completely on prompt, but this is what I came up with:
When finding oneself in the disposition of
being where one does not belong, or perhaps of
not belonging where one finds oneself,
it might be of consequence for one to ponder
how that circumstance came to be.
If, for example, one is where one does not belong
due to a displacement of some nature, one might enquire as to
what compulsion or energy caused such an event,
and whether it is a permanent condition, or whether
one might best prepare for subsequent supplantations.
Alternatively, if one does not belong where
one finds oneself, one may have merely been misplaced,
and may therefore be inclined to wonder
what careless entity committed such a dismissive act,
and whether one might perchance some day
in some manner attain one’s proper placement.
It is imperative, however, that one never allow
one’s emotions to surface and escape their
carefully fabricated confines,
lest one come to realize that the
feeling of not belonging where one finds oneself
is – in fact — excruciatingly painful.
Flashback #3 in my re-posting from a blog I wrote several years ago about my struggles with depression.
My purpose in revisiting the “old” me is to remind myself and any others who care to read, to:
claim the positive energy that is available to each of us for our own benefit and for the benefit of others.
This is a post from July 14, 2012:
One of the difficulties when trying to work one’s way out of a deep depression is facing the conundrum: We don’t feel up to doing the things that are going to make us feel up to doing things. At the depths of depression, it might become a challenge even to get out of bed, let alone actually take part in any meaningful activity.
During my various stints in intensive behavioral health outpatient treatment programs (which I prefer to just call “brain school”), I was taught a lot of things about dealing with depression. Some of those things I even remember. Then again, some things I remember probably weren’t really the things they were trying to teach me. So take what I say I learned with a grain of salt.
One thing I learned about doing the work I need to do to get better is that if I don’t think I can do something, or don’t feel I can do it, or don’t believe I can do it, that’s the time to do it anyway.
Do what I just said I can’t do? In a word, yes. Maybe I’m telling myself that I can’t get out of bed and face the day. But if my body is physically capable of lifting itself out of the bed, then indeed I can get up. If I survived the challenges of yesterday, chances are I can survive today, too. No matter what it feels like.
And if getting up and doing something is going to help me get up and do things, then perhaps I truly can take that first step. It’s kind of like practicing tough love on myself. Gently, though. Lovingly.
I’m not saying it’s easy. I can’t just turn on a switch and suddenly have the energy, the insight, or even the will to do something, even if I know it would be to my benefit. It’s hard, very hard. But if I can just make a slight movement forward, I can begin to overcome the inertia that feels like a 10,000 ton weight holding me down.
This all comes to mind today because I am heading out on an overnight camping excursion with my daughter. An absolute and utter miracle, if I look back on how I felt four months ago. Back then it was a major undertaking to get myself to the grocery store. Unless I had to buy food for the cats, it was just easier for me not to eat.
I am thankful for the therapists at brain school who told me to just do it anyway.
Wishing you a good day today.
Maggie
April Fifteen, Tax Day.
Doesn’t much matter to me, mine are pretty simple.
No investments, no dependents, one job.
On the job that day, as a matter of fact.
Working the southbound toll booth
where traffic comes off the bridge that crosses
the mighty Columbia.
A truck has stalled somewhere on the span.
A state police car passes northbound and,
several minutes later, returns.
I flag it through; no toll for State vehicles.
It stops anyway.
“You’re Margaret, right?” the trooper asks.
Well, not really… that’s my first name,
but I go by my middle name.
My driver’s license, however,
would show Margaret.
The trooper, who apparently has run my license plate,
invites me for coffee when my shift ends.
I accept.
April Fifteen, seventeen years later.
That’s the day our divorce papers go through.
Like many other folks I know,
I do not like Tax Day.
NaPoWriMo, Day 23. The prompt:
Write a poem about an animal.
Tell me again about the whales, Great-gran; did you
ever see one?
Yes, child, I have seen them,
but only from afar.
Even at a great distance, it must have been amazing!
That it was, child. That it was. Such grand beings!
What happened to the whales, Great-gran?
Oh, child, they went the way of the dinosaur,
and the wolf, and the elephant,
and the eagle…
Oh, how sad.
Yes, yes, it is very sad.
Great-gran, have you ever seen a human?
Great-gran… Why are you crying?
I have seen them, Child. I will not speak of them,
except to say there are some things
I wish I had never seen.
If you give a man a shovel, he’s going to want to dig.
He will dig holes in the ground.
He’ll want to plant something in the holes, so he’ll ask you for some seeds.
The plants growing from the seeds turn out to be edible, and lots of people will want to eat these plants.
He will want to dig more holes and plant more plants, so he’ll ask for more land and more shovels. You will have to clear the land of all vegetation and wildlife so he can grow his crops.
He will make lots of money selling his plants, so he will keep planting the same thing season after season in his fields, and he will invent easier ways to harvest his crops.
The soil will deteriorate from his harvesting methods and from his single crop farming. He will ask you for fertilizer to make the soil better and the plants grow faster.
The fertilizer will encourage weeds to grow in the fields, so he will ask you for an herbicide to kill the weeds.
The insects that have been eating the weeds will need a new food source, so they will start eating his crops. He will ask you to make insecticides to kill the bugs.
There are lots of bugs on the lots of plants, so he will need lots of insecticide. And more fertilizer. And more herbicide to kill the weeds that regrow in the re-fertilized soil.
As his crops get bigger and bigger, he will glut the market, so he will ask you for money to subsidize his farming.
He will look for new ways to market his crops, and will invent high-fructose plant syrup (hfps) and people will begin putting hfps in all manner of food.
As processed foods containing hfps become more and more unhealthy, people will begin to die prematurely from their poor eating habits.
He will need to dig holes to bury the people who die prematurely from poor eating habits, and since he needs to dig holes…
he will probably ask you for a shovel.
The end?
“In nature, nothing exists alone.”
~ Rachel Carson, 1962
This is my second time of re-posting from a no longer active blog I started in 2012. The blog was my way of working through a rather severe episode of depression.
My purpose in revisiting the “old” me is — I guess — the same as it was then, to remind myself and any others who care to read, to:
claim the positive energy that is available to each of us for our own benefit and for the benefit of others.
This entry was posted on July 13, 2012:
While we can control a lot of things in our lives — probably a lot more than our depressed minds allow us to believe — there are certain things that will play out for us however they will, with very little input potential from us.
So what do we do? Sit there and be the victim? Stick our heads in the sand and hope the problem goes away? Mindlessly bash away at the problem with futile “solutions” that don’t really solve anything? I don’t know about you, but those have been my top go-to responses. How’s that working for me? Not very well, thanks for asking.
Since my last mental melt down (maybe not the proper medical terminology, but you get the gist), I have been unable to return to my job. Bills are mounting up and prospects for work that I can do in the future without relapsing back into “melt down” mode seem few and far between at the moment. I don’t consider myself handicapped by depression, but I am extremely cautious about the choices I will need to make moving forward.
The big question for me is: what am I going to do about these concerns? Obviously worrying about them, ignoring them, or trying to bull my way through some desperate stop-gap measure isn’t going to help. So I am choosing to turn to another resource: faith.
That doesn’t mean that I have dusted off my Sunday School shoes, or that I let someone dunk me underwater in a lake somewhere. Not that those would be bad scenarios per se, it’s just not what I am talking about at this moment. I guess I am talking about what some might consider that “mumbo jumbo” kind of faith. Putting my situation out there into the Universe and trusting that things happen for a reason. I am here for a reason. I am in the situation I am in for a reason, and there is some (Divine, if you will) plan to all of this.
I don’t know the plan. That would take all the fun out of it, I suppose. I hear the Universe has a rather quirky sense of humor that way. But I am willing to trust that there is something bigger than me and that that “something” has my back. Something’s gotta give eventually, and my part in this is to be ready, receptive and proactive when opportunity comes my way.
A tall order, to say the least. It’s all too tempting to rehash every negative thing that has ever happened in my life and say, “See? Nothing ever works out for me. Why should this situation be any different?” But what does that line of thinking get me? Nothing good, for sure.
I am fortunate that I still have some wiggle room. There is still a roof over my head. And maybe that makes this whole faith thing a lot easier to swallow. My inner naysayer is telling me to just wait and see how I feel about all this Universe stuff once my back is really to the wall. That’s my typical depressed person thought, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And sometimes the naysayer is right. Time will tell.
In the meantime, I have a choice in how I respond to my situation, and I am choosing to trust, to put my faith in an outcome that I cannot see at this point. I will do the leg work once I figure out what that is. I don’t expect anything to be handed down to me from the clouds.
We’ll see… a great experiment. If it fails, I guess my naysayer can say it told me so. But if it succeeds… ah, there’s the faith!
All my best,
Maggie
NaPoWriMo, Day 18.
Our optional prompt for the day takes its cue from how poetry can help us to make concrete the wild abstraction of a feeling like grief…
Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail. This may not be a “fun” prompt, but loss is one of the most universal and human experiences, and some of the world’s most moving art is an effort to understand and deal with it.
I wonder how they know.
They make the call.
It’s time to come.
But how do they know?
He’s been gone for years already.
The memory, the recognition, and —
eventually — even the words.
But now he lies here, eyes closed,
erratic breathing, pale skin.
The phrase “death warmed over”
comes (irreverently) to mind.
Still, how do they know?
Mightn’t he wake up tomorrow with
that good-humored sparkle in his eye
and say something silly?
“You’ve grown so tall now;
your legs go all the way down to your feet!”
No, of course not. But still…
His skin is hot.
His breathing is ragged.
I expected clammy and shallow,
respectively.
I kiss his forehead, pat his hand.
I feel embarrassed that I don’t know what to say,
even though he can’t hear me.
I don’t say goodbye, because —
well — he’s still here. For now.
Then again, as I said before,
he’s been gone a long time already.
I wonder how they know.
What Rhymes with Stanza? 