I write and I write and I will keep writing and the reason why?
Connection.
I love emails like this. This was sent after reading last night’s essay called Light Sender.
Dear Jennifer,
This morning felt wrong. I realized that if I let myself, I could really sink down, down, down into sadness and loneliness.
Almost every night I get a twinge of it, and I shake myself. I kiss Mattie (my son) or I lay down with him and I ignore the inclination to dive headfirst into the pit of negative emotions I’ve got swirling around. It’s exhausting to keep myself above it.
This morning I almost had to pull the car over, the sadness gripping me like a band constricting around my chest.
I am torn. I think…I think if I didn’t have Mattie, I’d be in it. I’d float in it and write about it. But I can’t allow that. The writer in me craves it, though. I always write best when I’m feeling a terrible emotion, or a blissful one. I can’t seem to feel the happiness any more, and so the sadness is calling me home. But I don’t go, because I have a son who needs a mother who can show him how to be happy and healthy. And so I’ve been teetering on the edge of this, balancing myself between duty and misery.
Enter Jen Pastiloff, the magnificent writer Yogi who has been showing me the way out of this. I’ve been following you on Facebook, reading the blog posts that you share, and absorbing every one of them. This morning though I was dangerously close to collapsing in on myself, and I read what you posted today about light, and about darkness. You even posted it with an excerpt from Mary Oliver, who is my favorite poet.
Well today you wrote, “The chains I dragged around were heavy and unwieldy by I managed them because to let go would mean I would have to face the fact that there was indeed a light inside of me…” and I was floored. I mean, bowled over. I think it’s the first time I’ve realized that maybe I’m afraid of happiness. Afraid of losing it, and afraid of beings someone other than who I am right now.
I wanted to thank you for your words today. It isn’t better, or fixed, but it’s a beginning. A way out.
Aleister Crowley said that “the breaks manifest light.” Well, I’ve been broken, and just barely holding myself together. Maybe what I need is to let the light shine through those cracks and cast off this old way of being – so sad, so tired, so alone. Thank you for writing so openly and honestly, and thank you for inspiring me to move beyond coping with depression and find a way to actually deal with it. Heal it. Thank you.
~Lauren
Keep going Light Senders. Keep going. Keep shining. I am here. I got you. Lauren and all the other Tribe members out there, I got you.