a sudden admission of a problem

I’ve recently had to come to terms with the fact that I am depressed. I come by it honestly, since both of my parents passed away this summer, my mother and stepfather.

And while the business of death and the business of estates and the business of life can distract you and make you feel as if you’re okay, I have been suffering from a lack of motivation, and enjoyment of life.

“That is understandable,” you say. I’m sure, but I don’t feel particularly sad. But an outstretched time of blah is how my depression is manifesting at this moment.

I fucking hate this. And I’m in a position where right now I am blessed with some time and some peace and I have this gaping hole where caregiving used to live, that I could fill with my own self-caregiving or writing, or reading.

And I’m not.

It feels like cosmic irony, but it is just the human condition and it’s a pretty shitty condition.

I don’t know that talking to anyone is going to help me get out of the funk, although talking to somebody made me figure out that that’s what I am in.

It’s one of those things that I feel like I can’t get ahead of if I’m constantly stopping to examine it.

But I think we can all agree that depression is one of those things that if you don’t stop to examine it, it will slowly take hold of you and become so all-encompassing in your life that you don’t even see it anymore.

It’s a lot like capitalism that way .

I am trying to write. I’m dictating this because sometimes shifting the mechanical process of writing can help you break out of a funk, or a block, or a wall.

I have given workshops and lectures about “How to Write ” and I feel extremely unqualified to do that.

In a month’s time, I’ll be working with some students, I hope, on guided journaling and creative writing in a short session in order to get them to believe that writing is really useful as a life practice, and as a skill.

I want them to see writing as something they do outside of assignments. Something they are already doing.

How do I help students write if I can’t help myself?

Perhaps because I can’t help myself, because I know how hard this is, maybe I am in a even better position to be able to talk to them about why it’s important and why sometimes it’s hard.

If it was something that always came easy, I would be a horrible teacher because I wouldn’t be able to talk about the cognitive, physical, emotional, and mental processes that happen when you write.

Because it would just flow from me like some sort of water from a sacred fountain.

But it’s more like the old fountain in your high school hallway. It spurts, it stops, it clogs, it rumbles, sometimes it shakes.

And once in a while it explodes.

Because it does all of these things and is healing and disruptive at the same time writing is important.

And that’s why when I can’t do it, I feel like shit.

Right now, I believe that my problem is permission, that I have not been able to give myself permission to write.

Maybe it’s because Morgan and my mother were both writers and they can no longer write. And it’s not fair..

It’s stupid. But sometimes mourning is stupid.

I have not given myself permission to write for many reasons over my lifetime, and really, I’m just finding one more.

Because I’m afraid.

Afraid of failure. Afraid of success. Afraid of being seen. Afraid of dying.

The ultimate irony is I am afraid to write and thereby leave something behind because I’m afraid of dying.

I’m afraid of who I am–this brain, these thoughts, this identity–no longer existing.

I am blessed in so many ways. I am lucky and I am grateful.

I don’t know how to end this post.

Here.