January 24, 2008
Thursday
I’ve been sick for two weeks. I’m wobbling, I wrote in my journal. I saw myself on the verge of a full-blown winter depression, and I was frantic to short-circuit it. I kept trying to stave it off with an effort of the will (a strategy that never works) and with soothing practices such as drinking hot chai tea, eating high quality fresh fruits and vegetables, and counting my blessings (can’t hurt and it might help). Nevertheless, I was angry at myself for my unproductiveness, disheartened by all the household tasks that have gone undone (my Christmas tree is still up!!), and Tuesday night I just burst into tears because I didn’t know the meaning of life and felt overwhelmed at the futility of existence.
“Don’t fight the suffering,” wrote an old friend who’s been reading this stuff. “Let it wash over you while you then wait for it to wash away.” She identified herself as someone who also sometimes falls under the sway of that constellation of symptoms and reactions I characterize as Melanie, my Black Bitch, my depression envisioned as a black Labrador retriever. Don’t take her for a walk, my correspondent seemed to be saying. Let her sit on the sofa beside you. Stroke her head. Let her fall asleep.
If the medicine of the mustard plaster was in remembering my grandmother, then possibly the medicine of the present advice was in the offering of it. I did what she suggested, counted my blessings once again, and this morning felt well enough and together in my head enough to actually go out into the world. I attended my regular Thursday morning spiritual study group, went to the supermarket and followed this week’s Weight Watchers directive to “try something new” (Asian pears that I plan to poach with some lime zest and nutmeg in the chokecherry honey I brought from Wyoming), and then stopped at the florist to order flowers for Lynn’s boyfriend, who has been forced to withdraw from school for this semester while he recovers from mononucleosis.
And while I was there I put into practice another suggestion from the little book designed to help me have a happy life. “Buy yourself flowers.”
Thank you to everyone who has written, who has called, who has read my work, who has even thought of me in these last two weeks. Thank you for so much, so often.
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