De(com)pression?

I would like to tell you a bit about the story I'm telling myself right now. The story about what I think is happening to me.. Or rather my mind.

I am suffering from depression.

Or at least, that was the story I was telling myself last month. It sure felt like that. The irritability and deep, overwhelming sadness. The exhaustion. That feeling like I had never been happy and always would be sad.

I was beginning to forget. I was afraid that I would lose all of the wonderful things that I had learned. I didn't remember why I was doing any of this. I was finding only reasons to give up.

Today I feel like I may be coming up for air. I'm not sure for how long. But while I can look around with a bit of clarity I am seeing something different then I was expecting. Something I have been asking for. I think it is hope, and quite possibly healing, if I am brave.

Let me start from the beginning...

When I was born, and my brain began to form it's perception of reality, every experience planted a seed. It is a seed called neuro-pathways. Through this unfathomablally complicated process of building pathway upon pathway my experiences built up this reality as I experience it.

My experiences, my thoughts about these experiences, my memories of these experiences. Things as beautiful as music, as benign as dropping a cheerio in my high chair, as upsetting as getting yelled at for playing too loud... All contributing to the construction of this amazing and seamless reality. Sights, sounds, tastes, thoughts and even the understanding of the very rules that hold it all together.

Everything that could be perceived, planting a seed. This is my brain learning, bringing me into attunement with this reality. I am now starting to wonder if this is part of what they call karma.

This gathering of information and planting of the seeds, do you see though, how so much of this information may not have been the most accurate. Especially when it was given context by my young mind. "when you play you get yelled at... It's bad to play,"  or more likely, "you are bad". My small mind did not understand that maybe the context was more like.. "when someone is tired loud noises may make them angry".

I have gotten a lot of bad information. Also, and most destructively I think, my mind has taken a lot of bad information and run with it, creating some of its own very bad information and storing it with all the other seeds to create a pretty complicated mess.

I have to say though, that even with this crazy tangled mess of misinformation as my foundation, what ever this me is has done a pretty adequate job of holding me (and this little family) together through some pretty tricky stuff.. So, kudos!

So..

The story I want to believe is this...

Right now, at this time in life, things are pretty OK. My people are mostly well. They have a firm grasp on their own learning and growing at least. So now I think, maybe my inside whole self has decided that it's a safe time to do some housekeeping of her own.

I know that there is a whole self in there who would like to grow out into her life. She would like to have a more accurate picture of her reality and her place in it. She was perfectly willing to let herself disappear completely if that would help everyone along, but I am convinced now, that she can be the most helpful and useful just being as her whole most authentic self.

Somehow there needs to be some sorting out here. Some misinformation goes out and some good information in, I suppose. I've never done this before. The best I can figure is that if I give myself ample opportunities for attunement then maybe something will happen.

I have been practising attunement with my body by practice yoga. I practice attunement with my mind by practising meditation. I think quite possibly one of the very best things I can do is to experience as much high quality human interaction as possible. Attunement in relationship to others. A different kind of trick though, because I have no control over the kind of interactions I will experience. The best I can do is probably offer as much high quality human interaction to those around me as I can (slow down, be present, look at their faces, really hear them).

So far what I have been experiencing is a lot of sadness, old hurts and thoughts coming up. Sometimes things I thought I had gotten over a long time ago. Seems like depression, right?

What I see today instead of depression is the beginning of healing. I see this catalog of pain is showing me what is up. I am aware enough now to see without (hopefully.. Not always) getting caught up in the story. I'm not sure what to do with this. I guess what I'm supposed to do is to allow myself to feel how it feels without judgement, but also to see as clearly as I can what it is that I'm feeling and why.

Just be aware. That's as far as I can see today.

Oh, and don't be so afraid to lose everything I've learned. If I want to learn anything more I will have to put everything down anyways...  But that's another story I suppose.