Moodswings

Last week I wrote a high-flying post, full of optimism and confidence. Since then I’ve spent some hours slogging through life. It's not really depression: it’s not the deep dark hole many describe. The self-loathing is absent: I feel a disappointment in my inability to accomplish what seems like reasonable goals on a reasonable timetable, but no self-hate.

 

This week, as my attitude towards my life has swung from optimism to, not pessimism exactly, but disappointment, I’m left wondering: is manic depression deep in my nature? Is it an essential part of my personality? Is it as immutable as my eye color and height?

 

I think it likely all of the above.

Yesterday morning I woke feeling discouraged. Monday is the day I have few outside obligations. When David was sick and I drove him to the Cox Clinic twice a week for leukemia treatments, I made no other commitments on Mondays and Thursdays. After he died, I promised myself I'd continue that schedule. Gradually obligations, freely entered into, crept back into my Thursdays, but I’ve kept Monday free, a ‘stay-at-home’ day. Each week it spreads before me like a field of freshly-fallen snow waiting for my imprint. And many Monday evenings I feel keenly a lack of accomplishment.

 

What if I accepted the ebb and flow of my moods as a part of me, just as the tides are part of the ocean? When I visit the shore, I don’t resist the tide, I carefully survey the beach for signs of the high tide mark, where the sand is completely dry and never drenched in saltwater. That’s where I place my blanket. If I've arrived at high tide, the surf is near the blanket, if low, I must walk a bit to enjoy the waves.

Winter sun

January 25, 2022 

All day I’ve experienced an overwhelmingly warm and powerful sense of wellbeing.

I love the Indo-European root kailo-. From that root we get so many nourishing words: wholeness, health, hale (as in hearty and...), wholesome, healing, hallowed, and holy. A depth of wisdom is expressed in a language where health comes from the same root as whole, and where healing and holiness are bound into that same family.

I’m a Self-help Junkie and am perennially dissatisfied with what I can accomplish in an hour, day, or year. This weekend, in yet one more attempt to harness my potential, and very aware, painfully aware, that I’m running out of time and personal resources (on turning 65), I devised a schedule for the week, mapping out what I would do each half hour of the day, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Jim looked at my list and asked if it were punishment. I can see where he’s coming from, but I really didn’t think it was.

And this first day of the experiment bears it out. I’ve somehow given myself permission to actually accomplish my aspirations, from mundane but satisfying housework: laundry and sweeping and meal preparation, through answering emails, writing up board meeting minutes, and on to my greatest aspiration: writing.

Last winter, with so many activities cancelled or relegated to Zoom, I wrote about Fierce February Light and sunlight Piercing the Windowpanes. Activities still aren't back to pre-pandemic 'normal.' I find myself home all day on many days. I follow the sun's progress, rising in my south window and then falling to the west. It feels like magic. Distinct from a month ago, the sunlight pours into the windows all day with a different substance to it. I can feel without measuring that the sun is reaching higher at its zenith. All day I can tell it will set later than a week ago.

It has now set, making the woods behind the apartment buildings look soft and furry. I’ve always had that false impression, that the winter hills of New England and Pennsylvania (place of my nativity) are covered in brown sable fur and not made of prickly twigs and branches and hard trunks. It's a beautiful illusion.

The sunshine instills me with a deep and peaceful hope. Something is coming unstuck inside me.