Just keep typing...

I've mentioned before how my emotional self seems to ride on one of
those traveling carnival roller coasters. Basically I go around in
cycles of ups and downs and usually in modified fashion suitable for
riding by the cowardly not-up-for-big-thrills kind gal I am. Every
once in a while however, the universe decides I can handle the big
kids ride. It happens that I look up in astonishment as the car
crests the top of a hill, one that didn't seem all that precipitous,
and swoops down steep tracks that plunge into a tunnel. In that
tunnel there is no sense of movement. All that exists is the darkness
that is both inside and out.

Time and age have taught me to stay seated, to count and wait.
Eventually there will be a light and the darkness will lift. It
always has. The Sufis say, "This too shall pass," and they are right.
My habit has been to retreat within myself and to cherish to black,
to nurture and savor it, letting it take center stage in my day. I'd
be immobile. In my teen years I'd spend hours soaking in the bathtub,
depression leading to wrinkle-skinned cleanliness. In this house we
have only a shower so my water therapy is more stand-up.

I try to resist the retreat-in-silence routine. As a way of asking
the world to notice and provide reassurance it tended to fail. Family
and friends, busy with their own lives, became a source of painful
proof that I was invisible and worthless. Talk about self-fulfilling!
My treatment now that I'm older and perhaps wiser, is to keep moving
in whatever way I can. My daughter quotes John Irving's "Keep passing
the open windows." Take the next step. Make a phone call. Wash a
dish. Water a plant. Write a blog entry. Do the next thing that needs
to be done. Eventually the car rounds the bend and the tunnel is
behind me.