Letters to the Editor
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I may be wrong, but . . .
This sounds to me very much like clinical depression, with repeated cycles of depression, each time becoming worse.
This sounds very much like a letter I could have written twenty years ago. Friends and family become a burden. You cannot draw water from the well for them because the well is dry for you. Everything becomes "too much," even as you carry on, mostly through force of habit.
Though it is impossible to "diagnose" someone through the content of a brief letter, I would urge the LW to see a psychiatrist, and perhaps consider going on some medication for a while. There is a great variety of medication available, much of it relatively inexpensive, and it is possible that the right med could make a huge difference. Or maybe not. But it seems to me that it would be a simple thing to try. If it works, great. If not, well, at least he or she would know that's not the problem.
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Spring
In Summer 2006 I built a small pergola 17 feet wide across the very plain front of a small house. I planted clematis Amandarii vines at either ends and carefully tied their tendrils to a black plastic netting material which I stapled to the wooden pergola so that the vines would follow my direction. Clematis is a very fast growing plant.The vines have now met and closed the 17 foot gap. It is March 13. I see the promise of buds about to burst open. Pale ivory. They will have a fragrance.
Another much smaller pergola beside the main one is situatted over a little gate and it also has the same clematis vines.
My arabis plant is giving white flowers. In a few weeks, there will be a presence of white flowers all at once in my front yard.
They are there for a few weeks and will reappear next year and the year after.
My 4 ft tall peony tree has buds. The peony flower will be 9 inches wide when it blooms in May. Last mother's day, the bloom was 9 inches wide.
My redleaf smoke bush tree will give off lush burgundy colored leaves this year, just like last year. Right now, they are bare twigs.
My lilac tree has little buds. The lilac tree my neighbor pruned for me.
Today I went to the massage therapist. She is new to me. Trigger points are her speciality. She found parts I were not aware of.
I am going to be grandmother for the 3rd time .
My past life was so destroyed and ashen it would take several books to convey the story. A blade of grass will grow through the cracks of concete.
What am I saying?
Life has a way of renewing itself.
Spring always comes. We cannot prevent spring.
Grow a seed , a potted plant. Watch it sprout new growth.
People might let us down, but plants will respond to a little care and nurture.
When our life here is over, we go on to another journey, a Paradise journey, while spring, summer, fall, winter repeats its cycles leaving the seeds we planted here.
You, LW, have planted kindness ..listening to your loved ones. Time to take care of yourself now and poke around in new venues, places you have never been to, see what other people are up to.
It doesn't have to make sense. Just put one foot in front of another.
Doesn't hurt to ask for help and seek professional counsel.
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Open your mind and your heart will follow
I suggest going to Southern India for as long as possible - six months would be ideal. I have done this three times in the last decade. Each time it has changed my life and perspective and opened my mind and healed my spirit in unexpected ways.
When I get there I spend the first few weeks feeling as though my head is being cracked open - and not in a good way. I am filled with judgement and loathing - it's a tip, no sense of group responsibility, corruption, filth, poverty blah blah blah my mind rages - not without reason or logic either I might add.
Then, slowly, something else begins to happen. I am grateful for the fresh flowers women adorn their hair and computers with, that men adorn their cabs with, each day. The individual beauty of saris and jewellry takes me breath away. The kindness and generosity expressed repeatedly towards me, a rich westerner is incredible. The way people speak English is different - lyrical and funny, filled with irony and poetry.
The suffering I see makes facing fundamental questions unavoidable. Why am I so lucky? What does it mean? I haven't worked this out yet. It's changed me though. I'm much more apprecaitive now of what I have. It's easier to understand that I don't need to buy one more thing, I don't need to reach for one more gold star - I'm white, I'm middle class and educated and I have a western country passport. That's alreay an abundance of great good luck.
I'm much more generous now because of going to India. I am much quicker to spot and ease pointless suffering - no more meat, no more lying ... I give any way that I can and so much of it so easy and takes no thought at all. The banality of kindness is as much a reality as the banality of evil. More so in my opinion.
There is somethign about the way of life there that is an antidote to the western way of living. People value harmony, family, spirituality. They live in the most extreme and trying of circumstances yet still manage to express beauty and grace.
On a more practical note: it's cheap to live there, and nearly everyone speaks English. If you're considering going stay away from the tourist traps in Goa and Colaba in Bombay. Go to Fort Kochin, go to Kodaikkanal in the hills of Tamil Nadu, go to Pondycherry and Panjim. Read, eat, stay in one spot for as long as possible and look around you. Conections - internal and external - will start to flower, just like the garden in the letter above.