SADness Easing

Yesterday I just couldn't shake the SADness, although I wasn't falling all the way down. The first thing that started the uphill climb was getting a text from Nick and Izzy asking if we were doing anything, and then, as we weren't, they came out to sit by the fire and chat, and look at the moon, and be in the country peacefulness. It was just the kick-start I needed, and this morning I decided to be a bit proactive. I discovered something a while back, when I was working through John Kirwan's book, All Blacks Don't Cry, and website about depression. When I was depressed and people said, "do something you like doing, to cheer yourself up," it made no sense to me because when I am depressed, I don't like doing anything. Through JK I discovered that what I actually need to do is, 'do something I enjoy doing when I'm not depressed, even though I don't feel like it at this time.'

So I grabbed the camera and went for a walk around outside on this glorious sunny, wind free day.

 We discovered the kettle has been leaking, so after a couple of days of drying out, Mac is finally turning the slab of macrocarpa into a bench top!

 Such lovely wood.

 The ducks make me smile just because they are, well, ducks!

 The rhubarb hasn't died off this winter: the stems are shorter and thinner, but they have kept on growing.

 Snow drops are possibly my favourite spring bulbs.

 The tagasaste is buzzing with both honey bees and bumble bees.

 The magnolia which was a land warming gift from my friend Margaret, is finally flowering.

 Dew covered spider webs are always breath-taking.

 The hyacinths re a bit stunted this year, but still fragrant and beautiful.

 

 And who could fail to see summer in this glorious incarnation of joy?

 Mac was ploughing up a new potato bed, and I got stuck into the vegetable garden, so that when it's time to sow and plant, the beds will be ready and waiting. Gardening works for me in so many ways: just connecting to the earth, but also, the anticipation of harvest, the physical hard work, the sounds of birds and bees all around, the sense of usefulness, of purposefulness.

There's not much to eat at the moment - loads of parsley, a little silverbeet, pak choi, beetroot, miners' lettuce and carrots. But soon there will be lots to choose from, I hope.

Then, tired and sore from the digging, I watched as the light faded from the day. I'm still not out of the woods - but I can see the light over the mountain.

SAD

It's winter. I haven't coped quite as well this year as I did last year. For the last six weeks I had to really work hard not to fall into the chasm: if I am not constantly aware and actively keeping my eye on the path, I tend to wander just a bit closer to the edge. Spring is here - maybe - the end of winter is here, anyway.

It's been harder for a number of reasons on top of winter darkness. Financial worries. Friends drifting away as they move to different places, get involved in new relationships, new jobs, new interests - or just tucking themselves away into their own problems. An old amalgam tooth was disintegrating and, perhaps as it's been a long time since this happened, I failed to notice that part of my misery was the particular type of depression that always accompanies the leaching of mercury into my body. (A depression accompanied by deep anger.) Then more financial worry from having to visit the dentist.

And then the death of Robin Williams at age 63. I'll be 63 this time next month. If he couldn't make it through, can I believe that I will?

There's been so many wonderful writing about depression since Robin's death, and so much that I strongly relate to.

“No, see, I don’t necessarily want to KILL myself...I just want to become dead somehow."

I knew that the thing that stopped me actually committing suicide during the half dozen times I really wanted to, was the thought of the family and friends who would suffer if I did so, and the thought of the person who discovered my body, especially after I got to know someone who found her father shut in his idling car with a hose from the exhaust.

I've been doing a lot of thinking as I read all these people talking about their experiences and understanding of depression. I suddenly realised it wasn't just that I cared about other people that stopped me, it was that I realised that I have never considered myself as deserving of having my feelings matter. As a child I was smacked for being angry, sent to my room when sad and told to be quiet if I was happy and dancing around singing or such like - "what have you got to be so happy about," I remember my mother saying once. So I've just discovered that I have this underlying belief that I don't have the right to be depressed enough to kill myself.

When I heard that Robin Williams had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, my initial reaction was jealousy. In my worst times I have often wished that I would be diagnosed with some ghastly disease, so that it would be okay for me to commit suicide, because no one left behind would feel guilt for not doing something / enough to help me. How's that for sick?

So the next step in healing myself has become clear: I need to be able to have feelings of any kind without guilt, without thinking I don't deserve to have feelings. It's ridiculous that whatever I feel, guilt overwhelms it. Guilt because I don't deserve it. Guilty for thinking about suicide. Guilt for being depressed. Guilt for being sad. Guilt for not wanting to do things. Guilt for feeling proud of something I've done. Guilt for loving people 'too much'. Guilt for being happy.

No one should ever feel guilt for feelings. Sometimes the way we act in response to those feelings may be deserving of guilt. But not the feelings themselves. I want to reach a point where I can accept that I am entitled to my feelings, even the suicidal ones. I hope I never reach a point where I actually do kill myself, but I'd like to stop feeling guilty for feeling.

July Reading

Fiction

Snake Ropes by Jess Richards
I heard of this book when a woman, whose blog I follow, reviewed it:


From blog by Catherine at Still Standing On Her Head

Jess Richards was born in Wales and grew up in South West Scotland. The setting of the book is a mysterious island somewhere far to the west of Scotland. The inhabitants have long been isolated. Their only visitors are the mysterious tall men who come from the mainland to trade for fish and for the women's craft work, being careful not to disturb the culture of the islanders too much. The story is told in the voice of two young girls, Mary who is an islander, and Morgan whose parents have settled there from the mainland, after fleeing something dark in their past. If I had to label this book with a genre, I would say "magical realism". Morgan can talk to the dead, and the myths told by Mary's grandmother become tangled in the story so that it is not quite clear what is myth and what is real.

It's a stunning book, highly imaginative, unlike anything else I have ever read. I highly recommend it. 
 
I agree. It is a strange but compelling book! It is classified as fantasy, which I guess it is, but is nothing like anything I have read before. I won't say I liked it but I couldn't abandon it either. I haven't decided whether I'll read her second book, Cooking with Bones, which sounds from the title as if it is even creepier!

The Cornish Knot by Vicky Adin

The Cornish Knot is the story of Megan, a widow of 12 months who receives her great-grandmother’s journal written a hundred years ago. She embarks on a journey to trace her family tree, discovering secrets and finding herself immersed in the world of art. She follows the footsteps of her ancestor from Cornwall via Italy to New Zealand.This is the first of a series, The Past Finders, which will all be about 'history, family, love and renewal'. It's an easy read, not badly written, and well researched. However, it is somewhat unrealistic in its unfolding of the story, for the sake of drama - in a real life situation, the story would have unfolded in a much less orderly fashion story-wise, but way more logically in terms of a woman travelling the world to trace her predecessors.

As I say, an easy read, good for a journey, or for curling up with when you are sick, or like me, suffering from a sore back.


Memoir

Garlic and Sapphires by  Ruth Reichl

 I'm a vegetarian. I don't much like restaurants, especially the posh ones where the food has been artistically arranged on the plate - I get creeped out at the thought of all the fingers involved in arranging it - and I have never read a restaurant review. I also have a horror of big cities. However, a woman I met recently, and who I, so far, really like, mentioned Ruth Reichl, and one of the ways I like to get to know people is to read books they recommend. Well, I'm hooked! I'll be finding more of her books for sure.

Garlic and Sapphires is a memoir about Reichl's years as the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times. It is based around some of her reviews, but is about her discovery of sides of herself that she didn't previously know about, as she develops disguises so she can visit restaurants without getting the special treatment that recognition brought. She writes so well that her descriptions of food that would have me gagging even if I was 3 tables away, make me salivate. She is incredibly funny and insightful, and I can't wait to get my hands on another of her books - I'm looking forward to some cold, wet days in front of the fire!