I want to love the month that brings those changes... you know, the ones that move from a heat so intense you can feel it caress your skin on the most darkest of summer nights like a nocturnal Poludnica to sensing the chill so intense that it pierces the most thickest of clothes and paints a fine patina on your cheeks on its most blustery day as if gently kissed by a Hrimthur.
I love the idea of months like these... but living them can be brutal... admittedly, some years are better than others. This year, this October 2013, feels like some vile gorgon that needs to be fought tooth and nail. Its steel claws grabbing my heart in an elusive silence that I only realize I need to fight at what begins to feel like bottom.
This year, as the transition began I awoke one morning and felt like I had to just stop doing things... this is not a good place for a person like me. I started an involuntary shut down that my mind rebelled against and got to a point where I needed something external to push me over the edge. I was feeling like I had managed to punch myself in the gut in one of those sweetly french and existential ways... I was walking into a Sartre play and was desperately looking for my exit
I know myself enough these days that I can find things to tip me over back among the living, letting my time in an uncomfortable cuddle with the inner sloth come to an end or to at least take a break. Sometimes I am completely able to direct myself out of the sloth abyss and other-times I require assistance. This year required me to find an external mechanism to bring me back among the living.
Also, I should add that I had a hard time agreeing to the word sloth, I resisted because I grew up around tree sloths and think them quite wonderful and magical and this month has been less than that... but, I realized that it needs an association to a sloth, a cute arboreal mammal that is in need of a good mani-pedi.
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| Source: http://www.zooborns.com/ |
Now, I don't think that this is depression, but perhaps there is some other Victorianesque word that fits... melancholy or the doldrums might work, but they seem to be to much on the side of depressed and while I think it is most certainly something that is part of that spectrum on which one end lies ecstasy and on the other sadness or depression, it feels like something that is a nudge or two to the left of center...
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| Source: https://medium.com/ |
One of the things I did to try to get me to do exercises to help me get past this was to join SuperBetter.com. SuperBetter offered something to help me start looking at what I needed in order to move past the sloth. One of the first tasks I had was to draw a picture of myself as I felt that very moment (the worst in this series of monthly sloth) and did not find myself looking like a sloth but I drew something of some strange chicken woman:
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| Source: the photo album for the camera on my phone |
Yes, I am completely mortified that I put this out there.
The task told us to tear it up... but I was so completely horrified by the picture that I decided that I had to take a picture of it to keep as a reminder of where I did not want to be or return to. I tore up the original whispering a sweet goodbye to that strange perception of myself created in a place that might as well be the third nudge away from center.
So, I am still working my way to center, I feel one nudge away from where I think happiness resides....yes, I think happiness lives in that delicate balance between ecstasy and depression. It is the fullness of life and includes the good and the bad. It is the place where I feel magical and am able to count all my blessings. It is where I think of myself as consistently wonderful and beautiful and a child of the divine, be that God or the marvelously complex organization of cells that make me.
In the spirit of learning to love this October I am making a list of ten things I love about October:
1. My nephew was born smack dab in the middle of it and that is awesome.
2. It prepares and brings us to All Souls Day at its end.
3. Coffee tastes better on its chilly morning and hot chocolate is a viable alternative.
4. Working on Squinks Halloween costume.
5. Orange abounds in both nature and decorations, just look at all the gourds and pumpkins.
6. Blankets, I get to pull out the blankets by the end.
7. No more running the A/C, we shut off the thermostat!
8. Soup becomes delightfully edible in the dessert .
9. Greekfest (it is a Central Phoenix thing).
10. Some cool historical things happened this month (most American presidents were born in Oct.).
There, I feel better! I find that I may actually like October.
Relevant reference sites:
- http://www.rebellesociety.com/
2013/10/14/14-tidbits-to-stir- in-your-coffee-or-tea-when- the-sloth-visits/ - http://www.rebellesociety.com/
2012/08/27/blessed-be-your- longing-your-endless-ache- your-sharp-crystal-shatter- your-sea-glass-heart/ - http://www.superbetter.com
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BN