Monday, October 5, 2009

Progress.

 The paragraphs below were written via text messages to my email inbox while riding home in the car from a bridesmaids' weekend in Pa. I had planned to visit David, as I thought we'd be taking the route back that would take us past Front Royal, and Kelly had agreed to drop me off, but as the afternoon progressed (and I desperately held on to my hopeless hope of a visit), it finally became clear to me that for multiple reasons (Kelly didn't feel well, we were visiting her grandmother and so not going near Front Royal, David has a cold, Kelly needed to get home to take care of her dog), I wasn't going to be able to go. He and I haven't seen each other in about two weeks, and I had a little emotional crash--pulling my hood up and curling into a ball, and trying not to cry loud enough to be heard. Possibly an overreaction, but to put it mildly, I had really been looking forward to the visit. Anyway, I found myself going to that "this just isn't worth it" place. Later, in the middle of reading an essay about aging, death, and dying from Best American Essays 2006 (of which, so far, I can only say that I hope the book was misnamed), I texted this to my email address:

Writing every day doesn't seem to be an activity at which I excel. I tell myself that all these daily devotions, writings, exercises, prayers, somethings will simply come easy when I 'get on a schedule,' but when will that ever happen? Maybe by the time I die, or maybe by then I will have given in to the mental exhaustion that accompanies constant working to Be Better. Or maybe I will have finally learned to "go with the flow"--to live and love, and to genuinely enjoy life, instead of thinking of giving up whenever I slide* into this "life just isn't worth the effort" mode. Why is it so easy to suddenly find myself there? How can I build a buffer? Will time help? Habitual happiness? Is that something I can find or build? I have been working so hard at it. I have been doing so much better. But "not worth it" is, apparently, still just a state of exhaustion and a disappointment away. How could I give myself to anyone, without being able to trust myself?  Knowing that I might slip away forever at any time?

But maybe I should be grateful for and hopeful over the fact that I have been doing so well, and that I am only bored and tired ("not worth the effort"), and not flashing to ashes inside. You know, knock-on-wood.




*What I was meaning to say was that I need to stop sliding there.

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