Yesterday my batteries were flat. That is to say my personal, internal batteries.
Not only were the batteries flat, they were exuding negativity. Which is to say that I felt spiky.
Grant took one look at me and asked “Did you go down the hole again?”
During the months when I was weaning off oxycodone, I spent quite a lot of time down that hole, and he knows the signs.
Clinical depression never goes away. It can be managed with the right drug/s, but it’s always there, ready to snare you if you let your guard down.
This time I was not teetering on the edge, nor had I fallen all the way in.
I was more like the idiot tourist who recently “fell into Vesuvius” while taking a selfie and had to be rescued.
(He was arrested for being a nuisance.)
Taking account of myself, I concluded that I too had fallen on a shelf. My rescue would come from confronting whatever issue had reared it’s ugly head.
So, what was it?
My nerves were ragged. Small everyday things were annoying me.
A technical problem was making my brain explode.
Three nights of feline disturbance had left me exhausted and then I woke yesterday to stabbing pain in the foot.
Time to shut down and re-set.
While I was doing that I asked myself what other factors were contributing to this bad humour.
In large part it is self-inflicted by imagining things that are very likely not fact. Worrying about what other people may be thinking.
A pointless thing to fret about. People will think what they may. The only person I have to please is myself.
My code of ethics requires that I should be attentive of others and I do try, but you cannot be all things to all people. Lately I had been feeling “in the middle”.
“Treading on eggs” is something I never enjoy, having had to live that way for a long period once.
So I am reminding myself to dismiss all that.
What else was niggling?
It has been impossible to ignore developments in the January 6th hearings. Each new revelation seems to be more shocking than the last.
What appalls me more than anything, I think, is the sense I get that the great majority are really not shocked, that in the end no-one will be held to account.
Whether or not anyone is actually punished is not the point. What matters is that they should be excluded from ever again holding public office.
Which leads to the hopeless state of our government.
How is it, that crucial efforts to achieve clean air and clean energy can be shot down by one man who profits from the coal industry?
Clearly I know nothing about our system.
But I know it does not work.
Thinking and worrying about all this is doing my head in, so I say to myself: “Stop it! Stop thinking about it!”
But isn’t that we are all guilty of? Giving up? Allowing bad policies to continue? Allowing criminals to go free because making them accountable is all too much trouble?
At my time of life I am comforted by knowing that for me personally, all of this really makes no difference.
But it still makes my blood boil.
One of the best benefits of retirement was that I no longer had to concern myself with what other people thought of me. I could wear any clothes that were comfortable, express my (hard-left and anti-royalist) opinions without bothering if they upset anyone, and wander around with my dog not caring if anyone liked me in the least.
It was real freedom, with a capital ‘F’.
High time that you adopted the same mindset,Carolyn. Cast off the shackles of convention!
Best wishes, Pete.
Listen to David Shields. Joe Mansion has been proven to be right occasionally. But better yet, avoid the news. It seems to be ALL BAD no matter which way you look. Just look up and follow your clouds in the sky. They really are fascinating.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” is fine until it isn’t. Most people get to the stage where they begin to despair that anything will be done to change things and make them better. Then we stop trying and coast to oblivion, but try to enjoy the rest of our lives regardless of others. I am guilty of that!
Last year, parts of our country was hit by devastating floods, with tragic consequences. Our area did not experience such a thing and I had to go into work each day and suffer anger and frustration that there seemed to be nothing in this world that could seemingly awaken the conscience in my work mates, make them genuinely empathetic, make them treasure what they still had as compared to those who had lost so much. The same raucous revelry and slashes of selfishness went on, work was carelessly done and with bad grace.
When life troubles me, I seek answers in my faith. And so I did. I asked God what I could do for the pain and suffering of the flood victims. I lived too far away to go and reach out physically. But I did want to do something.Imagine my surprise at God’s reply. He told me to go to my life in deeper, deliberate joy and thanksgiving. To really, really live what others had lost. To live this even on behalf of my friends who could not care.
So even in the brutal grind of work, I forced myself to spend time loving my husband and kids, I cleaned my home even when exhausted, I cooked carefully and thankfully. I do all of this every day but often with my mind elsewhere. Now I did it with a paean of deep thankfulness.
And I think it changed me. Where once I used to let the world and life get to me, now when my government lets me down – daily it seems – I exact ‘revenge’. I go out and do all I can to live differently in my small patch of life. Maybe it looks as if it barely ripples the rest of my country. But God clearly wants me to do what I can in my life – because that makes a difference.
Hopefully all the little things we try to do will add up.
I believe it will.
Sorry my earlier comment was so long.
We all need it … switch off and re-set ❤️. Oh, and not caring what others think of us – it’s liberating.
It’s such a shame that we need to get to our age before not caring about what others think, but then again, I’ve never really cared. 😉