08 december 2021
Oh yes, let me write a feels entry to record some feels. Late afternoon sunlight is filtering through my windowblinds, my humidifier hums soothingly beside me as I click and clack away at my desk. I feel the weight of seasonal depression (much more than in years past) and I'm doing my best to move through it rather than analyze it too much. This too shall pass.
I dislocated my kneecap several weeks ago and it's made me even more sedentary than usual. No doubt this is also contributing to my depression so I'm trying to get some more movement into my daily routine but it's a challenge... I'm feeling pretty fearful about over-extending my knee and possibly injuring myself again. Connecting with friends is tough since it seems everyone is also attending to their own states of depression and/or winter hibernation. December is a time to slow down. I feel slow but I can't accept it and the need to constantly keep busy feels unshakeable. I read Jessica Dore's December tarot offering last week and bits of it have stuck to my brain ever since, especially the bits regarding rest:
" I’ve been thinking about what I relinquish in the endless state of feeling like there’s more to do than will ever get done and that that’s unacceptable. It’s a weird sort of scarcity with insatiability, unworthiness and shame mixed in. When I keep busy I give up tending to what’s torn at the seams and tattered with neglect; a tending which is painful. Reckoning is painful. The more I put it off, the harder it gets.
...
It makes sense that the compulsion to do anything too much, like work, could be rooted in shame. Because when you move endlessly toward something, like work, you’re pulling away from something, too.
...
I want to know what would be needed to really accept it, if someone were to knock on the door and say it’s not necessary to work all the time. That no one will die if you lay down. That you don’t need to earn the presence of loved ones as if love is a wage paid for your undying and limitless service. What would it take to believe them if they were to say, “you are forgiven.” "
This connection between rest and shame feels so concrete in my personal experience but (as often happens) I don't have the words to express how or why. Just the joy of feeling seen, the yes, this and so many mind pictures & memory sensations. I should be working but all I can do right now is contemplate and that's okay.