Tag Archives: recovery

I Am Not Alone (Part 3 of a 3-part series)

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Disclaimer: I’m no doctor, therapist, counselor, or genius. If this post about hope in the midst of depression and anxiety and related mental-health experiences is in any way true for you, know that it might be uncomfortable to read in the first place, but much more importantly, that reading it will not, cannot save you from your troubles. What you need is not a word of empathetic support from a fellow mortal with related experiences but genuine professional help, just as it’s what I needed first. Come back and visit me if and when you’re ready. If you don’t have any such problems, hurray for you! And read on anyway, because you might be able to help another person if you know better how she or he is living. Everyone’s truth matters, even when we don’t agree with or share it.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll shout it again and again from the rooftops: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥     ASK FOR THE HELP YOU NEED!     ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

When you’re feeling strong enough to do it, fellow struggler, I want you to ask for, and find, the help you need. A friend wrote me after reading the previous two parts of this post series, quite rightly asking: “As someone foreign to what you describe here, I’m wondering whether you’ve ever found it beneficial for two people who are both despondent to work together. Can the shared despondency do some good, like two negatives making a positive?” My short answer (strictly my opinion, of course) is, Yes and No. Feeling alone in sorrow is, ironically, almost universal, but the feeling ignores the reality. Being reminded we’re ‘all in it together’ can help. Mutuality of support and dependence can be useful, but only if genuinely committed on both sides to the wellness and well-being of self and other, and only in partnership with those qualified to help. Wallowing and giving up hope together is no better than doing so alone. Find the counseling, student resources center or person at your school, workplace, or community services center, and get in contact. Do a little research to find out what’s affordable or free, and accredited, in your area. Make an appointment, and be sure to tell the person with whom you make the appointment that your need is anxiety and depression related and therefore time sensitive.

Stand up for yourself enough to insist on getting the help you need. I was really, really lucky that the counseling center my doctor sent me to visit had trained ‘triage’ telephone operators who could determine how urgent it was that we patients get in and guaranteed an appointment within a week or even 24 hours, depending on the situation. We all know that for anyone who is suicidal, only genuine emergency care will do: a suicide prevention hotline, phoning 911 [the American universal emergency phone number], or heading to the hospital is essential. But knowing that the assessing operators at my local mental health center were trained to spot the differences gave me a little needed comfort and the strength to wait 24 hours more.

Meeting with this counselor won’t be an instant solution for you, though, honestly, getting through the first step of making the contact was for me by far the hardest, bravest thing I ever did, so everything after that seemed progressively easier! I cried and sniffled and howled through the phone call, through the days (weeks) leading up to the appointment, through the drive to the appointment—wondering if I could go through with it, though I’m delighted, if that’s the right word, that I was too afraid and embarrassed to cancel and inconvenience the stranger I was going to see—and I wept through the majority of the first appointment, too, even though I had little that I believed was so urgently, impressively scary or important-seeming to say or do. That’s the nature of the beast, isn’t it. I think it’s useful, when you decide you’re in need of help, regardless of feeling ready or courageous enough to seek it, to have a few little strategies for taking the starting steps. A checklist, if you will, can make the attempt at something so large ever so slightly less daunting. From my own perspective I can offer some possible options.

Think of others. The world shrinks incredibly when one is depressed and anxious. It’s all I can do, in the midst of it, to consider that I’m not the lone creature in the entire miserable universe. But realizing that my misery spreads invisibly to others, like any kind of infection, helped me, albeit incrementally, to decide I had to make a change somehow. I could at least drag myself to strive toward health for others’ sake when I couldn’t muster it for my own sake. The one ‘trick’ that still helps me the most often is one I suggest you try even before you manage to go out and get professional help: Focus your energy, however infinitesimal it may seem, on doing whatever itty-bitty-teensy-weensy thing you can do to help someone else through a struggle. I wrote about this technique that my mom taught me in a previous blog post, and it still regularly saves my shaky hold on sanity in stressful situations where I’m not actually alone, especially at social events, which are big stressors for me. Give it a shot a couple of times, and give yourself permission to ‘play the part’ of somebody cool and confident (at least cool enough to admit to a stranger that you totally lack confidence) and you’ll be amazed, almost invariably, how much it can help you. I’ve managed to get through events crowded with intimidatingly high-powered, celebrated politicians, artists, and social giants, in countries where I spoke little or none of the local language, by doing this. I’ve also learned along the way that many of the aforementioned intimidatingly powerful persons turn out to be just as needy and insecure as I am, merely better disguised!

Build a DIY support network. It’s a network only if you think of it going out as well as flowing in: you’re not only asking for help but offering it, and though you don’t believe you have enough resources for your own puny self, working to give some to others will show you better what you can do. It’ll be a hard slog, since so many depressives, like me, also fight social anxiety, and either (let alone both) can make it mighty hard to openly discuss deeply personal things like our mental health. Doesn’t even sound possible, does it? But it is. Dare to test the theory; you already know that you’ve got nothing to lose.

Commit to wellness. Sit down with at least one supportive person, preferably a loved and trusted one if you have any such thing. A fellow struggler, a professional, even a total stranger whom you deem trustworthy, might offer support, and that can be useful, too. Find one, or make one. Say to your supporters how much it means to have them on your side and that you will do whatever you’re capable of doing to help each other go through this process, knowing that you’ll all fall down on the job but you will not quit trying, because you owe it to each other as much as to yourself. You might not believe that fully yet, but I promise you it’s true. Even those who think themselves insignificant and invisible aren’t; what affects them for worse or better affects all of the lives around them similarly. If you can’t seek health and happiness for your own sake, try to do it with the idea that you can aim to improve the lives of those around you by being happier, healthier, and better able to assist them through their own difficulties. Imagine your improved health and well-being first as a fantastic, romantic ideal, then as a remote possibility, and then as a goal, and you’ll have a better shot at accomplishing this amazing thing than you might guess.

Take a first step. Make the first appointment you need, even if you don’t yet know how deeply you do, with the mental health counselor or resource person. GO. If this is someone who can see you and your supportive companion together, it might make it easier for you to approach at least the first meeting if you’re there to encourage each other. The first session or two will likely be little more than figuring out your current state of being and understanding your “baseline” in any case. Be bold, and assume that you will be helped by this process, even though it might not seem so at all times, and persist doggedly. Fight for your life. Ask your professional helpers straightaway: Please tell me about all of the FREE resources you can share with me [us], refer or recommend for my needs, so I won’t have the added anxiety and depression of finding something that helps, only to be denied it for financial reasons thereafter.

Commit to continuity. Follow up, whether it’s with this same person/center, or someone/where else that’s recommended. Do your homework. A counselor should be teaching you how to assess your own situation and what you can do to have a positive effect on it, whether it’s through making lists, keeping a simple journal (your blog or diary will certainly qualify, in many instances), doing some reading, learning to meditate, doing a small amount of exercise, adjusting your diet, listening to music, or something else entirely. Do the work. It might be laborious or even painful, but every bit you get through will be something you can cross off your list of struggles.

Reward yourself with your healthiest and most affordable pleasures every single time you feel you’ve made one atom’s-worth of progress. Don’t worry about falling down on the job again tomorrow, because you will. Know that when you’ve rewarded yourself with an honest “hey, I didn’t think I could manage that until now, but I DID IT!!!!” followed, perhaps, by doing the Snoopy Dance or wallowing in an hour of reading from that really trashy, sappy book that always makes you feel like hugging the universe a little, you will be more inclined to get back up and do the work again as soon as you’re able. Keep hunting for your Happy Place among your matrix of matrices. [Have I just coined a phrase?]

If all else fails, take the time to look at your reflection in a window or mirror on occasion and practice smiling ever more genuinely and convincingly, while saying to yourself in your silliest Stuart Smalley impression: “Kathryn Sparks thinks I’m cool. And she’s really amazing, so who am I to argue with her?” Because I really do know how tough it is to be one’s best self and I truly admire all who manage to do the hard work it can take to move in that direction in difficult times.

You do matter. Your well-being matters. Your relationships with fine people (me, for example) matter. Peace and joy to all of us.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Photo: I'm Only Human

Leave the Lights On!

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digital illustrationWhile I’m closing out an old notebook that I kept in blog form a number of years ago, I found yesterday’s post and this companion one. So what the hey, I’ll share this one with you, too.
It’s Thanksgiving Day [2005!] and I am particularly thankful this year for having celebrated a whole year of emergence from clinical depression. For anyone out there who has been mired in it, or still is, I send out a fiercely made wish for your recovery and new joy in life, along with this meditation I wrote after realizing not only how far and how long I had been away from my true self, but the cultural setting in which it is possible to get there without realizing it or even having others see it clearly.And with deep thankfulness that it is possible, with help, to be revived.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Let’s stop all this rubbish about Depression as a romantic notion.

The myth of suffering being necessary to ennoble the spirit or, more commonly, to shape creativity and artistry and the personalities that foster them, is an inaccurate and unhealthy construct that belies the potential power of sanity and contentment. The idea that much of the great art that has sprung from the work of troubled or diseased artists throughout history would have been impossible, or the artists Not Themselves, if they’d been well or happy is simply a gross assumption of the inflexibility of the human spirit at best, and an insult to mortal intelligence, invention, and character at worst.

In a telling moment of literal as well as figurative turning-on of the lights, participants in a 2004 Canadian study on Deep Brain Stimulation as a possible treatment for otherwise-untreatable depression noted that the world became a visibly, physically brighter place when “area 25”, or the central zone of depression response in their brains, was stimulated to relieve depression. Many of the patients described a distinctive, even poignant, instant of pleasurable shock when the electrode stimulation, suitably placed, flooded them not only with unaccustomed sensations of contentment and ‘rightness’ in their world but also a clearly discernible brightening of their visual perception. It was as though, one commented, he had suddenly remembered a whole range of colors and values and sensory impulses and emotions that had been locked away for decades.

Nowhere in this was there any indication that the participants in the study experienced a negative change in their self-concept when their depression was eased. No mention is made of the patients losing their creative impulses or intellectual depth. Not a note of regret or sense of personal diminution.

The breezy optimist, on the other hand, is not by definition dimwitted or shallow or uninspired. While cultures that have embraced a darkly Romantic mythos of the suffering genius tend to dismiss brilliance that emerges from happier sources as a fluke or as slick, glib cheapness that won’t withstand the value-test of time, many stars and their accomplishments defy those definitions.

Yes, depressed, manic, even twisted and tortured souls with the deepest of psychological, physiological, or chemical-addled warps and wounds have been the vessels and sources of high art and equally high drama, but they are far from alone in that. To say that they only achieved their greatness because of their damaged state is a cruelty, an insult, and a cop-out that says we all could not be greater than we are, if not equally “gifted” with darkness. If being let off the hook ourselves is what we seek, then let’s just be honest and say we don’t relish the burdens of effort and experimentation and get on with other things. I have a suspicion, as it is, that if there’s a notably higher percentage of mental illness among persons who could be classified as particularly ‘creative’, then the cause/effect relationship is one of persons being used to having to problem-solve their way out of unusually difficult circumstances on a regular basis, and so developing stronger problem-solving (read: creative) skills.

Meanwhile, cheer up! Look at the dazzle that being joyful brings. See the energy and wit that, when not wasted on grief and moroseness and morbidity, can be devoted to pursuing greatness instead, and run after it with childlike delight.

From Heavy as Lead to Light as a Feather

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graphite drawingThere are places I go, whether on foot or by car–whether passing through or staying a while–that are like instant decompression chambers for me. Whatever has been weighing on my heart and mind seems to fade away into the distance with every step taken, every thousand feet traveled by car, bus, ferry or train. Flying used to be in that category too, but post-9-11 security hassles and the resultant grumpiness of the industry and travelers alike has meant that I need some of that other kind of travel just to recover from the flying days anymore. But that other kind, oh, it’s amazing how much it can do to change me.

I’ve had the sort of trip that was more like a descent into the maelstrom as well. The true recognition of my need for therapy and medication for my clinical depression didn’t happen for a long time over the years of sliding downward but rather in the few hours of being driven home from a long weekend getaway in a favorite decompression place to the place where my depression was gathering up a thunderhead over me at work, when I simply started crying and couldn’t stop. It was a dark, grim day for me (not to mention for my poor husband the driver), but it was at least purposeful in bringing out into the open what had been lying hidden in me for ages, and in leading directly to my finally seeking and getting the help I needed. What’s more, thereafter when I or we took off on any of those favorite walks or rides of renewal and anticipation and refreshment, it actually worked again, and the good wasn’t undone by the return lap of the journey.

It’s been a good long time since that ugly, interminable day of rain and tears. My life is inexpressibly happier; even though I had been able to find much happiness to paint over that swinish inner angst and agony, it was still only a pig in lipstick until I could remake myself rather than trying to remake the rest of the world to distract me from my own brokenness. That, in itself, was a journey of letting go of unwanted burdens and lightening my attitude and perspective. And it made me so much the better able to appreciate and regain that wonderful sense of freedom, the shedding of cares and escape from ordinary and tiresome things that comes when I take off on one of these expeditions. Short or long, real or imagined, they let me let go of what small troubles I might have, take a deep, strong breath or ten, hold still in awe and enjoy what is right around me, and then come back to the rest of life with a renewed ability to find beauty in them, too.

Back from the Brink

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photoBurnout. Tension. Stress. Exhaustion. Doesn’t matter what I call it, the unfriendly truth of that state of being is the same. Distraction. Aching and malaise. Irritability, withdrawal, collapse. The dramatic drops in life participation and wholeness all come together in equally unpleasant responses.

What are the causes, catalysts and triggers? As many and varied as the moments of any lifetime, of a million lifetimes, can allow. How is it that I–or anyone else on this madly spinning globe–can survive such stuff assailing us, let alone prevail against it and win?

Why, in a number of ways, we all do it pretty much all of the time. That’s how our species can even continue to exist; if we didn’t have a whole arsenal of defenses and strategies for the cosmic battle, it would’ve taken little more than a moment’s stray breeze to blow us all to oblivion. But vulnerable and weak as we are, we do have our ways, and we survive.

Faith. Whether it’s the belief in something as grand and benevolent as a Supreme Being that will rescue me or in something as small and ephemeral as the offer of a stranger’s hand to grasp mine and pull me up, faith can overcome many an obstacle.

Hope, too. If not utterly confident of it, as long as I can summon a sense that there’s some probability or even possibility of better things ahead, I have a chance of mustering just enough strength, patience and will to wait for the good to come to me. I may not be able to reach for it myself any longer, but I can hang on, however thinly, to a promise of change and renewal. For the return of the light.

And love. When all other resources are at their lowest ebb, even faith and hope having withdrawn in the impenetrable distance, love can carry me through. I have a greater store than most, being surrounded as I am by not only the encouraging affection and support of spouse, family and friends but also the remarkably kind uplift I’ve received at the hands and words of a wide array of acquaintances and strangers buoying me in my life over every would-be catastrophic wave. Beyond even this, there is another love that serves me well, when I can remember it: the love inside me that, however pale and faint it’s grown in my weakened state, recognizes a need to care for and comfort others in their time of need. The moment I can step outside of my own need, my hunger, despair, anger, longing or sorrow, just enough to recollect the existence of anyone else, I tend to draw back, however slowly, from the brink myself.

I can look around again with eyes less inward-focused and with a heart more willing to keep living, hard as it may seem at the time, and crawl back toward more gracious and sanguine days. My fellow survivors show me how to do it all the time. In this, I am once again truly at peace.digitally enhanced photo

Hijacking Happiness

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digital artwork from a drawingTrouble, as we all know, is highly contagious. I was reminded of this recently both by a television character and by a couple of real-life incidents involving real live people (who shall here remain nameless), and all of them, real and fictional, have a number of similarities, the chief one being their apparent unshakable belief that their suffering is greater than anyone else’s, is incurable, and is probably the fault of everyone else too.

My life is pretty fantastically good, when you get right down to it, so to people who don’t know me very well it might appear that I have no business criticizing anyone else’s way of handling sorrow and pain. But that’s just it: even the most wonderful of lives is touched by trials now and then, and struggle or strife isn’t fairly measurable in the moment. My paper cut seems as dire as your childbirth pangs when I’ve just gotten paint thinner on my hand. I know this to be logically ridiculous in the extreme, but don’t tell me the paper cut doesn’t hurt like boy-howdy at that moment. That would be tantamount to me telling you that since your labor pains will probably be over in short shrift, they don’t compare in any way to another’s battle-for-life with esophageal cancer, so you should just get over yourself. Whatever agony each of us is undergoing is more than enough and not to be belittled. And frankly, since each of us has a history that is tinged here and there with darkness, we do all have a sense, however small, of what it means to accept our griefs and cope with, live with, and go forward with them still present. Real sorrows never truly go away.

And for all of us who can feel empathy, or even more than that, can feel sympathy without having experienced the fulness of another’s troubles, life after infancy (when memory, like the lifespan thus far, is short) can be a perpetual bombardment of such troubles even when they’re not entirely our own.

I, of all people, will readily grant you that some people are far better equipped than others to find ways to survive pain and suffering and to continue living a full life without resorting to out-and-out acting. But that’s just it, isn’t it: barring full mental incapacity, don’t we owe it to ourselves, anyway, to try every possible avenue of becoming whole and happy (and of course I don’t mean that superficial kind of happiness that is either fully false or simply stupid); don’t we? When my personal apocalyptic horsemen appeared at the intersection of a group of the classic stressors (job-related problems, health challenges and the sudden death of a close friend converging on me at the same time) and plunged me into clinical depression, I was fortunate to not only have some of the significant tools (support from family and friends, a great doctor and a good therapist, and ultimately, medication that worked for me) for doing battle with those monsters but also the sense that there was no other acceptable option but to try to do that battle.

I won’t lie; there were times–and will probably be more of them over the years–when I did have to take the tack of that ‘fake it till you make it’ mode, when I simply wanted to quit and lie down and just hope it would all miraculously fix itself, or when I was as sulky and whiny and crotchety and pessimistic and tedious as unhappy people can be. We humans are good at all of that stuff, better than at being sunny and charming. But finally, even in my worst state I knew that was no way to live, and that the important people around me would suffer at least as much as I did, if not more. Thanks to the aforementioned helpers, I am here to tell the tale. More importantly, I don’t dwell in that darkness, even though there’s not much I could prevent or even fix about the troubles that led to such a state of existence. Things just happen. It’s how I deal with them that’ll likely make or break me.

That television character–and the many real-life imitators I referenced–stays so focused on how traumatized and maltreated she feels (albeit by genuinely distressing events and problems) that they become her one-note existence. She has a hard heart because it seems less trouble to close it to others than to be vulnerable to further hurt, but of course the actual effect is that she treats everyone around her like dirt, riding roughshod over their feelings and regarding any trauma or maltreatment they may suffer, often at her hands, as inferior or nonexistent. In turn, after being stomped on repeatedly by her seeming egotism, narrow-mindedness and refusal to set her hurt aside, the people around her disperse as speedily as that unlucky drop of water hitting a sizzling skillet explodes into mist. Those who tolerate her constant vituperation, impatience with their perceived stupidity or lack of sympathy, and her seeming wish to continue forever wallowing in her fury and self-pity, those characters ultimately become uninteresting or even unsympathetic themselves to me; after the ninety-ninth offense anyone sits back and takes without a fight, they tend to my eye to look like either enablers or equally fixed in victim mode.

I think we all have the power to steal others’ health and happiness, at least as much as the reasonably healthy among us should make every effort to take charge of our own. Doesn’t mean perfection is expected, but c’mon, people, if there’s really no going forward with life, perhaps a retreat to a very quiet hermitage would be more apropos than imposing our worst on the rest of the world. Yeah, I said it: get over yourself, Kathryn. Even if it might occasionally require brief periods of kindly deceit, times of returning to fighting off the dark singlehandedly, and the ordinary moments of being a jerk. It’ll mean equal demand on me for repentance, amends-making, and getting back on the wagon. There’s too much life left ahead, I hope, to spend it mired in a grim and terrible past, let alone impose it on others.

The upside of all this is that there is a possibility of turning this kind of thievery to good. Very simply, if I have to I can borrow my equilibrium and contentment from others. Put myself in proximity to saner, happier people than me until I can manufacture my own, and quietly absorb what I can of their good graces. I, at least, don’t want to be the one who steals the joy of anyone else; that only becomes the reason for new sorrows all ’round. Happiness and health can be contagious, too, if we let them. And so we all should, my friends. So we should.

Nobody Loves Me, Everybody Hates Me . . . *

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photo

. . . Think I’m Gonna Go Eat Worms! [Note: no actual worms were harmed in the making of this photograph.]

Yes, it may be true that no man is an island–we all depend on others far more than we even recognize or comprehend–but conversely, every one of us is his or her own unique and seemingly isolated version of Three Mile Island at times when it comes to having personal meltdowns. It starts right at birth, when most of us scream and complain at having been removed from that ever-so-pleasant resort and spa, Mom’s innards, and ejected unwittingly and unwillingly into the cold, cruel world, and it continues, however sporadically, throughout our lives. We are such fragile creatures.

The majority of humans, happily, are not subject to this dark reality for too large a percentage of our lives, but it’s more common than is commonly discussed that we have trials, tribulations and the varying degrees of inability to cope with them that make us question, if not our sanity, then certainly our ability to rise above what’s bad, get a grasp on the good, and move forward regardless of feeling worthy or curable. Depression truly sucks–not just in the vernacular, but in the sense of pulling one down into a bottomless abyss like an evil and irresistible vortex.

I’m not referring, of course, to ordinary grief or sadness. We all get hit by those monsters at times. We flounder, we suffer, we recover. It may be deep and painful and take a long time to rebound from sorrows of even the most normal sort, but we do, eventually, learn how to go on living and being and take part in the doings of the world. Generally, that sort of difficulty or tragedy even tends to gradually heighten the sense and appreciation of what is good and joyful once we’ve experienced and survived the dark and can see the shining contrast of even a modest pleasure with what appeared insurmountably grim from its midst. True clinical, chemical, physiological depression, well, that’s a different thing.

It resists the most persuasive and intelligent logic. It batters self-worth and love in the most brilliant, gifted and accomplished sufferers. It tears at relationships of any sort with other people or with action, with one’s wit and will to survive. If it doesn’t make one outright, actively suicidal, it can simply kill through atrophy and attrition: sufferers have described the state of longing intensely to kill themselves but having no strength or energy to do so.

Why would I talk of such dire and dreary and horrid stuff, even think of it at all? Because I am reminded sometimes of when I used to be there. My worst bout of depression was perhaps aided and abetted by various situational and temporal aggravations, including the typical catalysts and intensifiers of real-world health and happiness threats: the onset of my spasmodic dysphonia, job problems, the murder of our good friend. These were of course widely different in intensity and timing, but to someone like me, their interaction with my evidently wonky endocrine system or whatever combined forces of chemical and biological imbalance were building in me meant that when I hit bottom, no amount of thoughtful and heartfelt reasoning with myself could ‘fix’ me or my situation.

I am one of the true Lucky Ones. I finally felt so brain-fogged, so unable to resist the pull of that deadly sucking, enervating, soul-destroying feeling of pointlessness and ugliness and being unlovable and incapable of doing anything meaningful or good–well, I got so needy that I actually let others help me. That was it. The only way out of the hole was to grip the hands reaching in toward me and let them do all of the work of pulling me out. Part of it was accepting these helpers’ assurances that they did indeed believe in me and in how I felt, that they loved me and knew that I had worth and potential. Part was letting others lead me around and taking their advice and simply letting go of what little shreds of ego I had left enough to say that I would do better in following an educated and experienced prescription for improvement than I’d been doing on my ever-weakening own two feet. And a part that was essential for me was loosening my grip on my insistence that taking prescribed treatment–both psychological and chemical–without trying to create or control it myself was a sign of weakness or failure. It took, in fact, all of my strength and intelligence to recognize that any strength and intelligence I had couldn’t save me.

The luck involved is clearly that together we (my caregivers–medical and personal–and I) did find the combination of therapeutic treatments, behavioral changes and chemical re-balancing medication that not only unlocked my present emergency state of depressive existence but ultimately proved to let me feel fully, wholly myself for the first time in my life. I know that this is not a cure but an ongoing process for as long as I live. And, having lived both ways, I am more than happy to take on that responsibility. It’s a privilege.

What’s most beautiful of all, for me, is that when it happens (as it has in this last couple of weeks) that several occurrences and situations conspire to remind me of this my past and how it shaped my present life and self, it also reawakens in me the profound gratitude for all of those complex minutiae that converged so miraculously well as to make this life possible. To make my continued existence at all possible, perhaps, but particularly such a happy me. What seemed like the most disastrous and irreparable of confluences instead conspired to make just the right blend at the right moment that finally offered me a rescue.

Turns out that eating worms is the very nourishment that makes some birds healthy enough to sing their hearts out with the pure delight of existing. Last week I was out walking and saw a ditch full of drowned worms, lured into and killed by stormy waters. This week I was walking the same route and the sky was filled with the most spectacular warbling, chirruping, musical bird songs I could hope to hear. Coincidence? Very possibly not.digital illustration from a photo

(* from the old campfire song Nobody Loves Me, Everybody Hates Me . . . )