Comfort

This is supposed to be manic season for me.  Now, I do not have the extreme manias of bipolar 1, but I have hypo-manias, and after spending 8 months out of the year clinically depressed, with or without medication, I look forward to my little manias.  Now, let me clarify here by saying that I am on medication and have been for 20 years, but contrary to popular belief, I still experience depression and mania just not enough to unbalance my life...for the most part. 

So, I look forward to my little manias, because I tend to have a lot of energy and get lots accomplished during that time and am much more extroverted than usual.  But this year I have been robbed!  No mania.  I’m tired, reclusive, scattered, easily frustrated, and often despondent; all manifestations of depression not mania.  Mania medicated is the one perk I get with this mess, and I’m not happy about this change in the program.

I think there is a perfect storm in play here; surgery, stress, the change in professional output, and others things I am not at liberty to confess here.  I can rationalize that perfectly well, but I am still not happy with the result, and I am concerned that I am heading back down into the bell jar in a couple of months and will not have had my little mental vacation.  

Even so, I push on, because that is sometimes what has to be done, and sometimes that energy expended to keep going robs you of your time for other things. Fatigue is an output of this endless requirement I have placed on my mind, and as a result, I am having panic attacks again.  My brain just does not have the stamina to maintain the anxiety.  

As I am sitting here typing this pathetic little story of mine, I am reminded of three words; comfort, grace, and hope.  If you read my blogs regularly you know I have pontificated about hope and grace a lot.  They are the words that draw me away from myself and deeper into what saves me every day.  My study and contemplation of hope and grace have taught me more about my spiritual walk than anything else.  Comfort is a new one, but rather than seeking to define it, I am looking to speak its language. 

Reptile Gardens here in Rapid City is one of my favorite places to go.  When we went there this spring, I went to see the kookaburra sitting in his little tree.  Everyone was trying to get him to do his funny little laugh by whistling and calling.  I read the little commentary on him and realized he responds to monkey calls.  So I sucked up my pride and began to talk like a monkey.  He turned on his little perch, cocked his head, listened for a moment and then let out his very unique sound.  I was thrilled to death.  It was the highlight of the day for me.

Comfort is like that kookaburra.  I cannot expect to get it to speak to me by hooting and hollering my distrust and skepticism at it.  I have to speak the language of comfort to receive comfort.  What I am discovering, much like that monkey call, I have to be willing to step away from my pride (because cynicism is really pride in knowing that nothing will work out), and choose to call out surrender and willingness.  

I think that the comfort I seek right now, no human can provide.  I am in need of the kind of comfort that only Abba can provide, and my spiritual walk is taking me through a time of learning how to speak comfort into my own life and accept it.   I am not there yet, but I know I’m headed in the right direction.

I read on my FaceBook page about a lot of my friends who are struggling with change and obstacles.  We could say that is part and parcel with life, but does it really help to minimize it down to “the journey” when you are in the throes of storms that will not give you a break?  I think one of the reasons I wrote my doctoral dissertation on change was because I struggle so much with it on a personal level, and I know I am not alone in that.  Change is good for us, but when it is thrust upon us through trauma, it is never comfortable, and comfort is a foreign concept.

I won’t offer anything glib here to tie off this post.  I have no answers, just thoughts, and often they are not worth much to me much less someone else, but I offer that I think you have to choose to look for that which can help.  I know in my personal experience that when I am experiencing what I am going through right now I have become very particular to put positive, healthy sensory experiences into my memory banks.  I have no real aesthetic sense of beauty at the moment, but that does not mean I cannot see it, and as long as I find a way to fill my tank with that which edifies, I will have access when I once again begin to be able to appreciate beauty, laugh, and even be happy on occasion.  I am a woman blessed beyond measure, and I know that.  Whether the chemicals in my brain are making an attempt to sabotage, I will continue to endure, and I will have comfort.

L