Keep on the path

"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress."  - Barack Obama

One of the hardest things for me has been finding a path.  Although I'm committed to doing what it takes to feel better, I don't know what to do.  My present path seems to be right at this moment.  I imagine there will be roadblocks and detours, but feeling hope for the first time in a long time has got to be as a result of heading in the right direction.

The worst part about depression, for me, is that I'm logical.  I think most people without experience with depression consider it "emotional."  While I agree that, on its face, depression sounds like emotion, it's deeper than that.  I'm not driven by emotion without awareness.  By that I mean that, although I feel awful most of the time, I recognize that I don't have much to feel awful about.  Although I feel like a failure most of the time, I know I haven't failed.  A therapist telling me that I have a stressful job, that I'm running a successful practice, that I'm a good mom even when I make my kids cry isn't tremendously helpful to me because I KNOW that.  It doesn't change how I feel about it.  I feel awful and I feel failure, despite what I know and despite what well-meaning people have to say.

So the changes I need to make must come from me.  I have to choose a path and continu e on it.  I am likely to lose confidence in this path, which is part of the purpose of blogging.  I think that being able to see where I have been will help me remember where and why I am going.  So for now, my path includes introspection, yoga, determination and honesty.

While honesty definitely doesn't include having to put it on the internet, for me this is the best honest I can be.   It's not for the public, although I've chosen not to make it private.  If I make it private, I'm not really being any more honest than I was before.

A beginning of sorts

I have been many things in my life.  Lately, I've defined myself mostly as disappointed and disappointing.  I've suffered from various bouts of disappointment during my life, a failed test, a missed opportunity, an unacceptable outcome...  But lately, it seems as though everything is wrong.  It's not you, it's me.

I suffer from depression and anxiety.  It is something I have learned to hide behind a well-developed facade.  I have come to live in a world where I fear the knock at my door, the ring of my phone, my very shadow.  I bark instead of speak.  I succumb instead of sleep.  I thrash instead of exist.

But I had a moment today.  I have tried many, many things to feel better.  I've changed my diet, trying to detoxify my system.  I see a therapist.  I have tried running.  I rearrange my furniture.  I write.  I ride horses.  I practice yoga.  It was during an early morning yoga practice that I decided I was done thrashing.  At the end of savasana, my eyes still closed, hands at heart center, I experienced a burst of orange light.  I marveled at the glow I "saw" and I decided that I must simply feel better.  It was as if the sun rose before my eyes, and yet, moments later when I opened them, the grey light of a winter hanging on too long met me through the window.

I found it difficult to find a concise explanation of the meaning of the orange aura, but that's okay for now.  For now, it is a beginning.  It is healing.  It is hope.