I've got a dear friend who appears to be dealing with a fairly major depression. The usual symptoms, or at least the ones that I've had: an inability to get out of bed many days, listlessness, pessimism, basic self care is an effort. I just went through one of those last year and I feel for her, but I know I can't do much more than be her cheering section when she can't.
One of her favorite sayings is "This too shall pass", but she says it with a heavy sigh implying that she is suffering and maybe doesn't believe it. I felt that. But I think I was driving somewhere the other day, between a couple of errands, and I realized that not only will trying times usually pass, but we have to go through them in order to develop any level of maturity. As a food addict, daughter of an alcoholic, my emotional maturation got frozen at some point. In order to catch up, I think it's gotta hurt, or at the least life has gotta be felt, and then you add in the rest of the big and small dings you get in the parking lot of life.
I've been through some biggies and also the usual ones: parental illness and death, my diabetes and hypertension, the depression, relationship issues, career brick walls and u-turns is what comes to mind. But I've come through them and I'm still standing, and some days I feel like I've been left standing taller and stronger, not worn down. I find my place is someplace I'm rather amazed to be.
I think of the plants at the greenhouse I worked at for a couple of years: the proverbial hot house flowers. In order to toughen them up, we had to subject them to some stress before they were planted. It's common to run a fan across seedlings to toughen up and thicken their stems, or before planting them outside to gradually introduce them to the climate. The plants suffer little cellular micro tears to ther stems when the breeze hits them. Just as when you lift weights, and not big honking ones, but something a little heavier than you may do daily, your muscles are subjected to microtears that heal and strengthen the bone and thicken the muscle.
I think that the stuff that "too will pass" does for my emotional strength what weights do for the body: I get the opportunity to grow from these things. For instance: I'm still all riled up over my upcoming choir concert and the classes I'm going to teach. I woke up from a lovely sexy dream way too early by the worrying. So I spent all this morning doing stuff to prepare for the things that are weighing on my mind. When I do that, the load seems to lessen.
I couldn't have done this, or it would have been much harder if my first action this morning was to take something to suppress the anxiety, run away from it. Even with all my supports, I still wanted to eat a piece of cheese after breakfast this morning, likely due to the anxiety. I didn't, because I knew it was insane after a very hearty breakfast, but I'd been down this road so many times before: I have fear, then eat something to smother the fear, fear returns. Fear has to be dealt with with in a variety of ways: doing what I fear or changing the scenario, or I go into a hole and eat to forget the world exists. The eating doesn't make it easier. I still have to face what I fear or choose to drop into oblivion. After 1 piece of cheese or a half pound of 4 different cheeses, plus bread, plus chips, plus chocolate... the same hard choice is still there for me to make. I used to not make the choices and instead bury it in an endless round of food.
It seems that life did conspire early on to stunt my growth, but I can still do a lot to recover from that, and have a pretty good life in the meantime.
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