210127 sad: working title

 Jan 27

 
     

Sunday's writing took me by surprise. It felt like sad was something I had not confronted consciously before but suddenly it was there in its basic form, unalloyed by anger, guilt, regret or depression. It has been easier in the past, for me to subsume sadness beneath and behind less painful feelings - less painful perhaps because they present as actionable or causal. 

Depression has been the go-to in my mental repertoire most of my life. It's like a hold-all, I have been dumping feelings in there without looking at them, or naming them or wondering where they came from. Sometimes their provenance has been too painful to examine, sometimes I never knew what they even were: fear, primal fear; anger, useless without an aim or a nameable enemy; regret, fruitless and weighed down with sadness. Even hate must be repressed or denied, because it too is impotent. It won't fix anything: too brittle  and sharp, like a shard of glass that, wielded as a weapon, will cut the hand that holds it. Guilt is easier, it's like a stick that you can beat yourself with; it comes with some semblance of control. 

Although I have been free from depression these past twenty years, and free from the damning damaging voice of the wicked inner critic, it has only been recently that I have begun to embrace joy and happiness. I say embrace, because I think that those emotions too I have repressed or hidden from, whether I was not worthy of them or they were too ethereal and would, once held, have to be let go. Haha, one of our family rules is to never pick up the teddy bear, because then you will have to buy it and take it home. You can keep a bear, but joy is like air or sunshine: it is huge and free and ubiquitous but cannot be held or kept on a shelf, only breathed in, basked in, allowed in, if your heart is ready. 

This occasion of sadness echoed my experience with depression and made me feel afraid. I moved in and out of depression, in cycles of six months or a year, alternately suffering and without will, or free, capable and productive but always on edge, fearing the return of depression. In each state I was unable to remember the other side of the coin. In the swamp there was no sense of anything beyond its borders and in periods of wellness I couldn't remember what that bog of darkness felt like although I felt its threat. In recent years, however, good days when I feel strong and can work are untroubled by a fearful anxiety that they will disappear, because I remember the nights and the days. In depression, I could not even comprehend that there would be a tomorrow. Now the nights are not so dark that I can't remember that the morning will come. I know that an unproductive day of inertia will pass and my strength and optimism will return. I can sit on the floor and wait for the new day without the terror I once felt of never finding my way back. 

So perhaps I am ready to feel sadness, allow myself to feel it, because I can remember now the other side and I can wait and not drown. I have learned somehow to feel happiness and joy. The sadness will not break me, after all. Maybe I am ready now to let in sadness, my mother's death; my father's - still an aching, close and tight; dogs that have died, places and things lost in time, and I can see other sadnesses like hills in the distance. I needn't go there yet, or ever, unless I want to.

I identify two triggers to Sunday's sadness: anniversary of my mother's death and Fig's blindness both. I have known, but I never let myself feel, the sadness of my mother's death. And with Fig's accident and possible illness I have likewise felt guilt, regret, anger but I've been running from the sadness, because I did not know if I could handle it. I have been afraid of drowning. I have also been afraid that if I admitted being sad, I would heap more guilt and regret on myself. That seems like a distinct danger. But, it looks like I can do some "sad", straight-up, and I see now that the door back into hope and sunlight is still open. (Like Lucy, in Narnia, looking back to see the open door of the wardrobe through the trees.*) I can be sad, feel it on my face and still breathe, in and out.

Our sadness in isolation too, we can remind ourselves, if we can just keep breathing, will not overwhelm us, but will recede again like a tide, or wane. The words and rituals that sometimes seem like so many frail paper boats, will actually work, more, or less, to move us through the sad time, until we can wade or swim once again. A candle, a hot cleansing bath, a cup of tea. Writing or painting, or making. 

Ah, why couldn't we be wise when we were young, when we needed it so?

*****

 

Blackie comes to see us, faithfully, every day. Fig is becoming more accepting of Black's friendliness. All Blackie wants to do is play. 

Fig is getting good at finding the door in and out, and finding his way back to the house without face-planting into a snow bank. The snow is now too deep for him to get through except where it has been cleared, so we walk on the driveway and the road. He seems less flustered as he weaves his way along the edge of the cleared path. In the house too, he is able to readily locate me and comes to find me. It is not new that he is most often to be found beside me, he took over that job when Shy (our third dog) died. She would always quietly show up where I was, and with her gone, Fig accepted the task. 

I wish I could read his mind. Is he content? I hope that he is not unhappy, fearful, or in pain. I hope that I am a support to him. To think that he feels alone and afraid, that is a sad thought. But there are words and actions I can offer him which, like the kindnesses we offer ourselves, I know will give him comfort. Speaking to him, holding and petting him will soothe him. 

*****

It snowed again last night. After dark you can't see the snow falling because there are no streetlights outside, just starless black night, but when Fig and I went out before bed, I felt it on my face and when we went back inside Fig's coat was white with it. It has been a month since Christmas - a very long time in a pandemic in winter. But we are close to Groundhog Day and that means only weeks until March. Where is my candle? It is noon, but the sky is grey and I could do with a small brightness just now. 

Keep well. Thank you for visiting. 

Mumma Yaga

*****

"Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.

Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree-trunks, she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out. (She had, of course, left the door open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe.) It seemed to be still daylight there. "I can always get back if anything goes wrong," thought Lucy."

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 1.