Day 12: Four Letter Words and Three Day Rules

I’m in a slump, emotionally speaking. I’m tired and cranky and the more down I feel, the more it seems everyone around me is doing so great! If I care about you, I love that you are doing well. I really don’t begrudge anyone joy when and where they find it in life. So, I keep switching back and forth from celebrating with people that I love to crying in my breakfast. At least it’s online so they don’t have to witness the mess that I am.

I know it’s always darkest before the dawn. I know not to give up because the struggle gets hardest just before a breakthrough. I know all of those cliches that are actually often true. But try telling my mood that.

Tell it to hope for love, to dare to wish for our dreams, to rest in whatever is happening now because now is still a good step in our path, that life is give and take and not always fair, and if we want to be free we must take the good with the bad, but above all, to never cease to care about the next step. I just tried to tell my mood all of those things. Care to hear the response? My mood says those were a lot of four letter words: hope, love, dare, wish, rest, give, take, fair, want, free, care… Mood wants to eliminate those from our vocabulary today. Those things aren’t easy to do. They’re not even easy to want to do right now.

Now if you know me at all, you’ll know that I don’t believe in good words versus bad words. Words are only tools to convey what we are thinking and feeling. If we are thinking and feeling something extreme, just say it as is. Dressing it up in “acceptable” wording doesn’t change the intention of what you are communicating. If you slam a hammer into your thumb, saying damn is a far more honest response than saying golly gosh darn it! But other words, words like love and hope, those mean what they mean and the meaning hurts today.

I have a three day rule. I adopted it after having lived so long with depression. I tell my friends whenever they are going through something that they can go through it for three days before I will insist they take action. If you want to cry and scream and hide under the covers and eat nothing but doughnuts, fine. You are entitled to feel what you feel so let yourself feel it – that’s how we process things. Pretending you don’t feel it or living in denial about it will not help you heal, at least in my experience. But if it goes on for more than three days, seek help. I’m not sure where it came from, but I’ve discovered that you can only cry for so long, you can only pout and whine and hide for so long before your body naturally starts to feel ridiculous and thinks “What am I doing this for?” and then you stand up and brush yourself off and move on. Sometimes it is a conscious effort, but if it lasts longer than three days, it may be bigger than just a mood or just a struggle. If you aren’t coping better, not seeing some improvement, get professional help. I know that and I will follow it. I’m pretty sure I know what my current funk is about and it’s only been a day and a half. I’m already feeling a bit better after just writing about it.