Creativity, Christ, and Overcoming Mental Illness
Depression is more like grief. It's a crushed feeling. A grinding into dust. A shattering. A grating apart like flour forced through a sifter. A parasitic tapeworm of the soul. A weight on my chest, so heavy I can hardly breathe, producing the panic of an asthma attack, as if I am about to die.
Gratitude is never first on the scene. Like anger, it's a reaction only, more often a choice, and when consistently pursued, a habit. Like other emotions, it's a fuel. But unlike depressive states, it's not a fuel that burns me down to ashes, it's a fuel that drives me forward. It's flexible to any kind of attack, has no end, and it can roll any which way. Like a sphere, I suppose. Love is also like that. To me, gratitude in the midst of my circumstances, no matter what they are, is an expression of love toward my God; an unwritten love letter lived out.
A poem about the relentless pursuit of my Love through all my darkness and storms.
25 days and 8 hours. That is the amount of time that has passed since my last post. I've responded to a few comments, liked a few posts, but the words have dried up at the tips of my fingers like the petals of a flower in the desert.
N.'s artwork was beautiful. In the way a mausoleum is beautiful. Or a dark forest. Or an abandoned silo. Or even a ghost town. Otherworldly. Tragic. Magnetic. Haunting. Fascinating. Profound when pondered. ...Disturbing, as only death and neglect and long-accepted despair can be. N. was "other." Apart. And none of us dared go near him.
Or maybe I'm just telling you all of this to make me feel better. I'm not violent--I'm prone to yelling and occasionally punching walls or slamming doors. I'm not crazy--I'm emotionally unstable and unpredictable. ...Whispered words to a fractured mirror. But the real question is, have I accepted it?
Last March, Spring Break. I can feel it coming as I leave the city limits on my way to a long-planned vacation with the kids. It's a growing sense of trepidation, hovering over me, threatening like a black wave, trembling in place, poised to wreck its ruin...
