sitting with fear

 

I am suffering depression. Not the lifelong depression where I need to take something to balance and help me, but a deep, soul changing depression, which I must learn to sit with. Learn to sit with, instead of trying to fix it.
Being taken into 'the depths of despair' as Ann would say. Or on a journey into darkness like when Jonah was swallowed by the whale, taken on a journey which it seemed, he had no control over, in the darkness of a whale belly. Or when Persephone was taken into the underworld, with seemingly no escape.

that's me.

my own depression is most probably not rational. I am sure no depression is rational. It grabs your mind, your whole self and it is as if you can not escape.

my depression comes with the movement of the planets, it comes with the trickery of my mind. fear about the future, my own immediate future. Of selling and moving, of homesickness and of not being in control of any of it.
and before anyone says to me to live in the present moment, I know all of that, but my mind doesn't. My mind races off into the future and before I know it, my  heart is racing along with it and my breath is shallow. Then my adrenals are stressed.
Yes, about not being in control, which is laughable really. Letting go of control and trusting. Oh how I struggle with that.
And not measuring up to all the modern day gurus, who make millions of dollars spouting off daily affirmations for us all to follow. I. just. can't. Which makes me feel like I have failed in a very unenlightened and unascended way. I cannot grasp the meaning of 'all is well in my world', when it doesn't feel like that at all.

I must allow myself to be in a dark place. As hard as that is. As painful as that is.
Is it wrong to sit with the pain, allowing it to engulf me? Apparently yes it is wrong. Don't stay there they say, get up, be joyful. But what if, what if one needs to stay there for whatever reason. If one needs to allow the darkness to completely engulf one. To hit rock bottom. To be bare. To cry buckets of tears, to allow oneself to feel as if there is no escape.

And that is where I am. I am functioning. I am doing my housework and cooking. Day by day. One foot in front of the other. Still functioning yes, from behind a glass window.