Where the edges became frayed
Posted on | April 13, 2008 | 11 Comments
I’ve been shy here, lately. Perhaps dodging myself a bit. Not really sure how to pick up where I’ve left off—I’ve been so sporadic with posting lately—yet I really am missing the regularity of sharing moments and comments. I’ve been fragile this winter.
For the first time since November I felt like I could breathe in again this past week without anxiety fraying the weft of my heart. Miraculously (maybe) or intentionally (with great effort) I’ve stopped feeling like if the world will clatter to a halt around me: a mess of splintered parts if I stop doing everything I do for a split second.
Depression, however fleeting, put me right up against the edges of things: the tattered cuff, the broken branch, mud-spattered snowmelt at the edge of the road. It stained my heart ashy, the color a clouded sky turns after dark.
Not something I was used to, wide awake at night, each day starting out with tight breath and tears close.
I think it had something to do with the fierce longing that I have so often voiced, that eats away at me like a smoldering fire if I’m not careful. A longing to be both here and somewhere else: making a homestead, doing the exact opposite of that (whatever that may be.)
It also had to do with the fact that I was feeling imbalanced at work: I was giving too much, yet not willing to give it. Lately I’ve been feeling less depleted there: allowing myself to focus thinking critically about learning, and children; somehow honing this as a craft.
Perhaps this was what was hardest for me: reconciling the fact that I am still a teacher even as I long with my whole being to be able to write full time. I let myself start hating my work simply because it was the thing that was stopping me from doing the work I was yearning to do. It almost felt like a betrayal to dedicate myself to my work at school, not that that rationally makes any sense.
I realize now that really I was making myself bitterly unhappy because everything in my life was skewed. I resented my work, and myself for doing the work, and this resentment had a corrosive quality like salt and lemon juice. Everything felt scoured and sour. I felt inadequate as a writer, without enough hours in a day, and that inadequacy burned a hole in the very center of my creativity.
Recently, gradually, I’ve been letting myself sink back into the small fragments of my life, not yet whole the way I wish it could be, but certainly a mosaic as it is. I started doing some running again, down our mud slicked road with grooves down the center six inches deep. I started painting. And I got word that I’ll be teaching second graders next year which excites me. I like teaching older kids. I love watching them become thinkers, with writer’s notebooks and organized work spaces, and I like them more than I like the younger ones who need so much reminding about things like nose blowing.
In the end I keep saying it was the winter, and I keep feeling like since the arrival of the first mellow (if not warm) days, my mood has evened out and I’ve become more peaceful. But I cannot say for sure. What is it really that ever makes us sad? I don’t think it can ever be defined entirely by the narrow perimeter of the weather, or for that matter a job or another human being. Somehow, achingly, each arrow of sadness is drawn from the sheaf of our own unquiet soul.
Comments
11 Responses to “Where the edges became frayed”
Leave a Reply
I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
DAILY ART:
Follow:
Tags
Categories
Archives
ALWAYS:
April 14th, 2008 @ 8:31 pm
i am moved by your honesty…
April 14th, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
“Not something I was used to, wide awake at night, each day starting out with tight breath and tears close.”
You have such a beautiful knack of putting into words those things that I feel and yet can’t describe. I could entirely relate to that sentence, and yet I don’t think that I had ever consciously been aware that was how I start my days when the depression bites.
I’m so glad to hear that the sadness is easing as the days grow longer and warmer.
April 14th, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
I have truly never been so moved by someone’s writing…except when I read yours.
April 14th, 2008 @ 9:48 pm
You are not alone – I have been in a similar situation this winter myself, complete with the whole what I love vs. what I do career situation. Thank you for putting everything I have been feeling lately so eloquently into words.
April 15th, 2008 @ 1:38 am
It’s not the job stopping you, you know (and I know you do know)…I’m also glad to hear the sadness is easing, and I think that the seasons and the weather and the light affect us MUCH more than we’d like to think. No way you can come down to BP’s and see us when we’re there?? That ought to cheer you up!
April 15th, 2008 @ 2:20 am
When I watch a city of dour people become friendly and fanciful just because of the sun, and I read in friends’ emails and posts the time table of spring sweeping northward just through the lightening of their thoughts, I believe with Liz that we are strung to the weather tighter than we think.
That is to say, next year I’m definitely heading south in February
.
April 15th, 2008 @ 7:56 am
Sometimes it is easier for the stuff that bothers us to come up when the sun isn’t shining.
April 15th, 2008 @ 11:34 am
I, too, think the seasons affect us. And I was amazed when my husband suggested that my bad allergies this spring might be making me depressed; a little research confirmed that this was truly a possibility.
Also, I think as INFJs we do struggle with our very strong idealism and high expectations for life (NOT a bad thing!) and finding a way to balance that with the more mundane parts of existence. I’m still trying to find that balance…
Thanks for your honesty!
April 15th, 2008 @ 11:55 am
I am beginning to see my own life with that pattern of sorrow in winter, the hibernation and quiet, and with the wet, with the springing forth, with the green and the meals outdoors, things begin to feel better. I’ve been blaming it on teaching too, so I’ll let you know how that changes when I change–the MFA starts next autumn, and though I’ll be teaching half time, it will be teaching college kids, and I’ll be a full fledged student. Putting off babies for a few years, which makes me grateful and sad all at once. The push-pull of what our bodies want at this precarious age.
April 16th, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
i suck at commenting, but know i love you, and hear you- totally.
April 17th, 2008 @ 10:53 pm
I just love you, love your mind and your heart and your utter honesty. The honesty that keeps us writing – whether online or off – is always what scares me. We are forced to get down to the nitty-gritty, like it or not. But we are so lucky and blessed, because we get to resolve or mull over our whatevers and grow and heal.
Winter really is a rough time, and while these past two winters have been better for me (all the hormones?) I have not forgotten the bleak ones. And you know we barely even HAVE a winter down here. But I’m happy to hear you are feeling better, that things are resolved.