Into Darkness. And back … #2
So I was discharged last week from the day clinic I was being treated at for my anxiety, depression and panic attacks and during the last week I was frequently asked by the therapists as well as my fellow patients what I was expecting to happen once I got “out”.
Of course I had asked myself that very question. Because the inner child was raising it. What are we gonna do? Who is going to help us then? Will it not be the same once we leave the protected space of the clinic? Would we be afraid again? Would we be able to face the fear and cope? And that would have been the moment to start thinking again. And to identify with those thoughts.
It’s been three days now. I am sitting at the table of a cottage we rented for the honeymoon we didn’t have back when we married. I am looking out in the garden and the trees are swaying in the wind. The storms of the fall are coming to Normandy. There is a dramatic sky overhead as the sun is getting ready to disappear.
I have felt something in those three days. Saw myself. Saw us. What we and I could be. Both positive and negative, And I didn’t shy away from answering those questions.
We’ll live, my boy. We’ll help ourselves. It will not be the same, because we have a choice. We will be afraid again, because it is a part of being human. And we were able to face the fear and cope. We always were.
We were once born healthy and free. Something happened. And it’s not like it just happened to us.
If you are talking about depression, anxiety, substance abuse and dependence and trauma, you are probably talking about 80% of the population.
Dr. Bruce Perry, Senior Fellow, Childtrauma Academy
We have been reliving this past again and again and went back to the basement every night to watch those movies on end. And it made us believe that was us. That’s who we were and ever will be.
If that would have been the price to live with the days coming up, this seemingly endless stream of moments, that at least would have been logical. Maybe not the best solution, but a solution.
But we were scared of the future as well. Because we were trying to imagine it, while we were still here. The future never came. Just when you thought you had it, it turned into Now and it was gone.
It is so hard to accept, because it is so life-changing that it scares the bejesus out of us. That there is just this moment. And this one. And this one. That this is all we have to live. To love. To act. To create. And that there are more truths we need to learn to accept if we don’t want to be grabbed by the throat by anxiety every day of our lives and to find out the moment we’re dying that we missed out on so much, because we were hiding from the truth.
We will be sick. We will get old. Everybody and everything we loved and cared about will change and be separated from us. And we will die. There is nothing any of us can do about it. We can just see that this is true and get it over with.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Stop expecting. Stop anticipating. There is nothing to do in this life other than living. Being happy. Making others happy. Seeing the treetops sway in the wind. Hear the surf half a mile away. Taste the sea on your lips. Hear the music. Step back from everything and realize that it is you looking out of these eyes into that garden. That you are the space for all this to happen in. That there is no better place to be living in than where you are right now. That you are you wherever you go and all you will ever have is with you every moment of your life.
It’s been three days. And I was alive. Breathing in. Breathing out.
Basically Good 