Stars can't shine without the darkness...

(This blog is dedicated to those that struggle within their mind, or fight internal battles everyday to stay healthy, to stay afloat, 

and also to those that listen to me every day, who wander these moonlit paths with me, not squirming or growing squeamish in my telling. I value you. You know who you are <3 )

sometimes I have a phrase, a lovely turn of words that directs the course of a blog, like a rudder, guiding the words forward, feeling their way through choppy and smooth seas by turn. But tonight I don't know how to start this. How to express what I feel. There's so many different emotions swirling in the center of me, feeling their way to my skin, peeling back layers, allowing expression when perhaps I wouldn't want anyone to see, when I fight my tears of anger and frustration.  But that's how it goes sometimes, these tough places in life, these unwieldy places that sometimes get so heavy that I drop what I’m carrying, or I fall down, or at the very least, I stumble a bit.

And someone speaks to me of choice...choice. Choice of feeling in these moments, how to feel, what to feel. I don't have a choice in carrying this load, carrying these heavy weights that I must have been coerced to walk, chosen to experience so that I could grow, GROW and evolve, learn and trust. Because if I were like a hothouse tomato plant, maybe I would never choose these things. Maybe I would choose a life of luxury, excessive money, a mansion, nice cars, and a the perfect American dream, sipping a glass of wine and considering my perfectly manicured nails in the evening before retiring to a scented bath and a soft feather bed.

But no, here I walk, in this dark and sometimes cold place. Sometimes the light pierces so blindingly, and most times I realize the magic of this life that transcends anything and everything I could have imagined. Truly, Blakey is that blazing light, that sun in my sky, that starry studded heaven that fills me with awe and wonder.

But he also casts the darkest shadow I might experience, the most challenging walk I could have ever fathomed. And truly, I didn't fathom it, didn't know it. For as great a light as some large object casts, the shadow must be as great, the darkness as long and deep. And isn't there that certain time of day when shadows grow even longer, stretched by a dying sun? I feel that in this journey, this path I walk. I love so greatly, dedicate myself so fully and so my feet, my arms, my very soul's torso is tied to this path, tied inextricably to this gift that is my greatest joy and my deepest sorrow.

Perhaps it seems un-sanctimonious, perhaps it seems sacrilegious...but I think of Mary, mother of Jesus in these desperate times. I am drawn to all the stories that show her pain. Sure, there's the story of a baby, god incarnate, in a manger, and angels singing a beautiful chorus. But what of the other moments? 

I think of Joseph and Mary running, running with all that was within them, to escape Herod's edict, that every boy child must die. Mary must have had her stomach in her throat, the worry with that. Would Mary have felt something beyond anxiety, knowing if they were discovered, that Jesus would be slain, without a backwards glance, watching the sword drive into her beautiful boy child, his blood spattering her? Her heart broken into a thousand tiny bits in one desperate moment?  She must have imagined that scene as she ran and ran, her worry, her fear the very wind that spurred her onward. 

Did she miss her home in that time, that two years that she was not allowed to return to Nazareth, that she wandered in a land void of her particular faith and religion? Did she feel adrift? Depressed? Was she wracked with anxiety about what ifs? Did this trauma scar her ever after? Wondering if Jesus still might be taken even after Herod passed, if some new king wouldn't come and try to drive them out again, or worse kill the very child that she had born, that she must have loved more than anything or anyone else in the world, not only her son, but her believed savior?

What about when she was scared out of her mind that he had deserted the family caravan to teach in the temple? He was twelve!! For everythings sake! Twelve!! And then he was flippant with her? He told her not to worry and she was chastised by her twelve year old child, and she must have hung her head, at once ashamed and outraged, unable to speak, silenced by him. What did she feel receding from that moment? Did she replay this scene a million times over? What did she feel in each internal retelling of it? Did she regret, or wish she had spoken differently? 

What about when Jesus was homeless, unmarried at thirty years old? Sure, he was apprenticed. He must have been a fine carpenter. But why didn't he follow the Jewish code of marrying and bearing children? Why? And Mary must have wondered. Had she done something amiss. And now he wanders the desert, for forty long days. Does Mary worry? Worry that he will go hungry? That he will be eaten by some beast that thirsts for his blood? Does she worry that he won't come back to her? For a mother's love for her son is the most complex I think, a love that defies most others, is undefinable by most, and surely, the way he came to her at birth, woven in every thought of him. 

 In those moments, does she remember the miracle of his birth? Does she think of the angels singing? Does she remember that first feeling of his small swaddled bundle of warmth against her breast?

And it almost goes without saying, to think of his death...but that is not my story...not in this moment.  So I won't express my thoughts regarding that.

Still there is the angst that comes from great blessing, great calling, from profound depth, from walking these unknown paths, to trodding these unwalked paths. There's this feeling of darkness, of feeling my way through. I don't know yet what care Blakey will need. Will he live with me forever? Will he always need someone watching over him? What happens when I die? Will anyone love him as much as I do? They couldn't, but will they care for him as if I was still there? As if I still could?

But I have digressed, brought my own filament into this story, my own bias to these words...they are not your story, your particular trajectory. We each have our own path to walk, our own story  that weaves and winds. 

But I struggle in the glib statements, the ivory palace quotations of those around me. 

"God knows and he's always there."

"It will get better." (well meaning of course)

"Just think positive."

"Don't you know that all things work for good?"

"Remember, worry is a sin"

"God knew what he was doing! You can trust him implicitly and know that it will all be perfectly fine."

I cringe to hear the things that are so ready on someone's lips, someone who isn't in this place, who doesn't face the darkness at 3am, that most strange time, a liminal time, a time caught between two worlds, neither day nor night. I hear the whispers, see the specters. I wonder at a life not yet lived, and wonder still more at what has been. Something undefinable, something that is simply maneuvered moment to moment, brush stroke to brush stroke. I can't plan. I can try. But somehow those plans go awry. Blakey defies any sort of planning. He is a moment by moment challenge to be lived and experienced and sometimes I can't predict what will come next. I can react, hope to make better plans next time. I don't know anything. That is what I most profoundly know. That is the paradigm and the house of cards I live by. I. DO. NOT. KNOW. ANYTHING.

A friend said this to me once...using the phrase, "future fearing" the present tied up with worries of the future. It's not easy in this life, assuming that as Blakey grows, so will his powers of reason? But then his body is now 68 pounds and his reasoning powers still that of a tiny child and I carry him, transfer him, pulling my back. And now, I am laying in bed, unable to move, wondering when reason will catch up to size.

Maybe you relate...maybe you struggle with a mind that goes wayward, a mind that won't follow your bidding. Maybe it's a worry that plagues you, incessant and demanding you to suss out all the tiny threads within a story. Maybe it's anxiety. Maybe it's even these dark and winding paths that are depression.

I meant this blog to be about mental illness, to bring awareness to it, maybe my own particular awareness...those disorders that are beyond a choice to think the right thoughts, or be positive, or just "think happy." Sometimes it's so hard! Sometimes it's just not that easy. And I don't know what to say to someone who tells me to do that, to just think my way out... because this life is mirey - thick, dark, full of mud and treacherous steps that might land me on my butt. I didn't choose it. I didn't know it would hold so much magic and darkness in the same breath. I feel the golden sunlight so often, but sometimes the fetid darkness sneaks up behind me and knocks me over, knocks the wind out of my lungs. I lose my breath and sit there, gasping for a minute, feeling those tears that burn behind my eyes, threatening to spill at the most inconvenient moments. But you know? I fight!! I keep fighting. That's all any of us can do in those moments that are so hard, that create so much inside of us that feels insurmountable.

Sometimes those feelings come, but I try to let them course through me...let worry course, let fear course, because maybe they can knock free some blocks in me, some inability to move. And once I feel the release, when I wake and see the sun as bright as I imagined her, then I can go forward again. But it is an every day thing, a fight and a thrust to keep stepping in those times.

I want you to know, I see you dear one, I see your broken heart. I see the worry that threatens you again and again, this vicious circle that takes you round and round, like a bull caught by the nose, and made to plow over the same ground again and again. Maybe you find a shred of meaning each time? Maybe you just want it to end? Maybe you choose in unhealthy ways to cope? But for all the times you make a choice to give yourself a high five, or keep going no matter what, or just tell yourself, "you're doing the best darn job you can", I laud you, congratulate you!! You can do this! You can! And you will. And we are not alone in these places that try the soul, that evolve the spirit. We will stand and continue standing until these things pass, until the darkness lessens to twilight purple. 

 You’re doing the best you can. Maybe you are treading through the darkness as astutely and carefully as you can. And in the end, you'll make the right choice. You will choose the right step forward, the right action. Because we got this! We got this together, and we will persevere. 

Maybe you don't have any experience with these feelings? Maybe this feels out of your depth...and in this moment, I honor you for reading this blog, this difficult transit of words and feeling. Now I will ask, could you sit with those of us that wrestle sometimes daily to persevere through these darker places? Could you say things like...

I don't know what to say, but I am here.

I am not going anywhere.

I hear you. I see you.

These are dark places. You're so strong.

Could you take a brave step and ASK what is needed? Emotionally? physically? Or even what perhaps needs said? Admit you don't know. Admit that these things are beyond your ken. It's ok. It makes me feel less alone. Makes others feel less so. If you say that you think things are going to be alright, really mean that!! Mean it from the bottom of your soul, or don't say it at all! Really there's no guarantees.


So much love, my dear readers....remember that yes the shadow is great, but some great light must have created that shadow? We just have to find the sparkles and flickers of that. Make that glittery trail more beautiful and more captivating than the velvety blackness. After all, stars can't shine without the darkness.