Create the life...

[DnJ]

Good Morning El

I’ve lost all faith or trust in the new management. It’s sad. The company was a leader in the industry…

I didn’t know you worked for the same company as I. LOL.

Sorry you are to the point of needing to quit for your own sanity.

Languishing does ring a bit true. But it feels incomplete. But I agree, defining it with words is hard. Maybe once I finish reading Atlas by Brene, I might realize there is a word for it. I am trying to have an open mind about the future. Know that it will get better and I’ll feel better. But in my soul, I don’t feel it yet. It still feels so out of reach. So far out of my imagination. In fact, I am struggling to even imagine it. It’s a really strange place to be.

Depression is difficult to put into words. Like any emotional state, defining it with words lacks the full intellectual clarity we are trying to convey and define.

Thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. The first, is more intellectually based and most easily conversed and conveyed. Language’s basic purpose is to convey one’s thoughts. Our thoughts are highly conscious and controllable.

Feelings and emotions are born from the subconscious. This realm is influenced by our thoughts and actions and values, and is not directly controllable. Makes it all the harder to pinpoint specific wording to describe what one is feeling.

Beliefs and convictions are the realm of the soul. This, like emotions, has a propensity of nonspecific clarity when being described. It’s faith. Very hard to just conjure or control like we can a thought. One just has it or not. More or less.

While within the strange limbo of depression it is near impossible to imagine a bright future. It’s one of the elements that define depression, the lack of ability to see feel a better future.

You touched on something, an excellent way forward (IMHO) - “But in my soul, I don’t feel it yet”.

Faith, belief, soul - is more than feelings. It’s not thoughts. It’s not feelings. It’s both and neither. It’s faith. Ha, like I said, difficult to convey with words. You won’t feel it in your soul, and you so very will. (Honest, I’m not talking in circles. Lol)

I feel so frustrated to have to deal with [the job] too on top of everything else. I lost the person I thought was the love of my life, I lost my dream home, I lost myself, and now I lose the job I had wanted for so long. I feel like I’m in a giant washing machine…sure maybe all the stains will come out and I’ll be better than new, but this tossing and turning and drowning in water is so damn hard. When will it stop? I don’t even feel like I’ve reached the spin cycle yet. And then I feel guilt for focusing so much on myself when people in the world are suffering more than me. Like what is wrong with me? I have a roof over my head, I have decent health, I have some money. Just suck it up.

This last bit, depression, is the hardest of the path towards acceptance. Everything, the loss, becomes real. Is real. You are just finding your way to emotionally accepting that. By the way, you’ve long ago intellectually accepted/understood what happened; emotional acceptance is basically emotional understanding.

A few ideas and bits of advice/suggestions from what I discovered:

I lost the person I thought was the love of my life: Yes you did loose H. Yes you did, and still do, love H. And you have temporarily lost the love of your life, which is you! Love you! First and foremost. H’s path is about him, always has been. Your path is about you.

I lost my dream home: It is difficult letting go of a dream/reality. The sticks and walls of that house did not contain the feelings and beliefs of the dream and of home. You did! You can believe and live and have another dream home, and life.

I lost myself: (((Hugs))) Finding ourselves within all this wreckage, discovering ourselves - again, is amazing. This golden opportunity is painful and so worth the effort. For a while, I did not see my great future. Did not look forward to tomorrow. Now, things are very much different and blessed.

I lose the job I had wanted for so long: You haven’t lost the job, yet. Ensure you make decisions based upon intellect and reason, not those temporary and fleeting feelings.

The washing machine is an excellent analogy. The spin cycle. When will it stop. And so on… For what it’s worth, realize we don’t get the stains out. Those stains are what make us better than before. Love and embrace your life and past. Each and every past moment was necessary. Each and every present moment is an opportunity.

“Like what is wrong with me?” Nothing is wrong with you. All perfectly healthy and normal part of the path.

I had a long convo with my brother last night about things and about my mom. I realize I have a lot of anger towards her right now.

Excellent realization. Something to work on, let go of, for that inner peace you desire.

My mom is a wonderful person and was an amazing mom, but she is very stuck now in a very unhappy life. She lives very far away, will not travel and is very isolated. Every time I talk to her it’s same story but she refuses to do anything about her life. A million excuses.

It is difficult to inspire someone into action.

I feel so sad for her and wish so much that she had a different life.

In my humble opinion, this is also your feelings about yourself.

But all she wants to do is complain about it…and complain to me about it.

Oddly. Strangely. Funnily. Not sure which. Years ago I brought this kind of thing up with my Mom and Dad. I felt they were complaining too much. Mom told me she liked complaining. Lol.

Looking at the facts of their life, the action of their life, instead of the words and how I would live, I realized they are happy.

And the burden of her unhappiness is more than I can bear in my current situation. This situation has been going on a very long time.

And not your’s to fix. Which I know you wisely see and understand.

I feel angry because I feel cheated out of a life with my mom. She won’t visit, we have to go there, and I want her here.

Yep. Perfectly understandable feeling angry. You want her to visit. She won’t. Unmet expectations create resentment and anger.

You only control you. Inspire better not bitter within yourself.

Being there is being in her unhappy life. It’s also exhausting. She’s better away from it but she won’t go anywhere.

I had a grandfather like that. He refused to go anywhere. When grandma, his wife, had an aneurysm and was inches from death, he still refused to leave his hometown to even go be with her. Some people really do become, or are, incapable of moving beyond what is comfortable.

By the way, my grandma did recover, spending 2 months in hospital in my city. Grandpa, all the while by himself. They lived together for many more years until he died. She outliving him for another two.

I feel sad when others talk about how their mom was right there to help them when they are going through hard times.

Sorry. That does sound rough. In-person does provide a different level of support.

My mom will listen on the phone, but it’s not enough. Especially because her own unhappiness always becomes the biggest part of the conversation. And she will say things like “I just don’t want you to ever end up like me” and I get angry because the example she is setting is so bad. She used to be strong. I just find it so frustrating. And I feel sad that she will die so unhappy. But I also know I can change it for her. But it still makes the whole relationship so hard on me emotionally.

I am guessing you meant “…I can’t change it for her.”

However, I also suppose part of you is saying you feel you can make her life a bit brighter. Although the burden of doing so is temporarily just that - a burden.

I did try to set a boundary about not having every conversation be so negative, and it really backfired. She cried and lashed out and denied that she is doing what she is doing, so I have tried to change the subject or get off the phone etc. But it’s hard. She’s been dumping her sadness on me for so long that she is desperate to keep doing it. And I feel guilt because I know she really doesn’t have anyone else to turn to. My brother is much better at handling her unhappiness than I am. But our relationship was always different from theirs.

(((Hug)))

It is so hard to watch and let such occur in someone we love so. And yes, there are feelings of guilt.

Our path. Along with our own mid life transition, our spouse’s crisis, all the loss, we are coming to terms with our parents’ morality. (And our own.)

I mean I am kind of functioning. I got my health back, I’m eating decent, I’m getting some exercise, I’m doing things with friends, I’m reading and healing, but I’m also still struggling…to get through the divorce, to now find a new job/direction, to move into an apartment… I can’t stop moving because I feel like I have no choice, but my mind and body I think are trying to get me to stop…not by screaming and falling apart. But rather by going quiet. Feeling unmotivated. By not being able to dream about anything, except if I will watch a show on Netflix with popcorn or go to bed. It’s a chore to get through each day. I feel like I’m in a fog…distracted, shut down, lost.

Elbereth, struggling is ok. Snails pace is ok. 1% forward, heck 0.1% forward IS infinitely better than 0%. You are making progress!

“I can’t stop moving because I feel like I have no choice, but my mind and body I think are trying to get me to stop…not by screaming and falling apart. But rather by going quiet.”

That concerns me a bit. You feel compelled to keep moving? What happens when you just be calm and still?

To be clear, I’m not worried you are heading to some disaster. No, I just see you needing to reconcile your “cars”. To get your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual paths aligned. With those four cars more side by side and travelling similar speed and direction, much peace and contentment awaits.

I do like my car analogy (if you recall it from a couple of years ago). We can only drive on car at a time. We switch or focus on one of our four paths at a time. An accuracy which allows one to see deficits in one path vs another, and allows one to maintain enough focus and conscious investment into all paths to ensure we are journeying well.

Perhaps your physical car needs to pull over for a bit. However, in truth, I believe it’s your emotional car that is zooming along. Doing things because you feel you need to. Take the focus off that “needed to” action, and do something not needed to. If that makes any sense.

I know I am strong enough to get through it all. I know I have a future ahead…but as I mentioned above, I’m struggling to visualize it or get excited about it. I wish I could just take six months off and go to some healing retreat where I could just focus on healing and not necessarily on living. But I can’t. I know no one will take care of me but me. I have no one but myself.

Anyway, these are the thoughts running through my brain tonight. I wonder if anyone else has heard of this and if they think this is real? Or if it’s just depression.

Yes you are strong and will make your way through the fog. The demands of day to day living do tend to pile up once and a while. It is a nice wish to just be able focus on other parts of one’s life for a bit. Of course you know you can’t. Well, won’t is really what’s going on. Seeing it as can’t removes your control of the situation.

Good job preparing for mediation. H’s timing of BD and his bonus is rather typical of these folks. He is in for a starling financial wake up call methinks.

Also, trying to prepare for the move to the new apartment. Feeling sad that I need to sell/get rid of more of the things I own. But also feeling sad that maybe I will never have a need for some of it either. It’s such a confusing time.

Downsizing, especially like this, is not much fun. You are doing fine.

I just want to be past all of this already. I just want a calm, normal level of stress life again. I want to feel excited when I wake up in the morning.

It is coming my dear. And far sooner than you feel it is.

Realize you are not alone on this journey. Several folks are walking beside you.

Have a great day my friend.

D