Long Time

Wow. It's been almost a year since I posted anything here. I think maybe I'm finally healed enough to start posting stuff here again. I don't know. I read the stuff I was posting last November, and it feels like a stranger posted it. I remember the pain and confusion, but not the specific thoughts. Last Christmas was quite possibly the most miserable time I've ever experienced. I was severely depressed. "Holiday Blues" sound like such a petty, little thing...until you're the one going through them.

I even experienced a suicidal moment. A short moment, thankfully, but even that was enough to scare the hell out of me. It was partially chemically induced; I later discovered that ginger tends to exacerbate my "down" moods. But for one moment, I actually wondered if the world needed me in it. If it wouldn't be easier just to be gone.

In the meantime, I'd stumbled onto one of Thomas Ashley-Farrad's books on Mantras and chanting. That was one of the few activities that relieved my misery. It even seemed to help after I'd stopped. In that book, he mentions committing to a 40-day practice on a specific chant. That got me thinking. Why just chanting? Why not taiji and yoga? So sometime after Christmas, I made up a calendar to keep track, and decided that I wanted to make it through 108 straight days of practicing each art: one round of the taiji form; one yoga routine; one round of breathing exercises; one round of chanting.

108 days. It gave me a goal, something to focus on, and it meant I was doing something healthy for my body and mind each day. 108 days. Within the first month, the depression started to lift. 108 days. I was starting to feel like a human being again. 108 days. By the time they were up, I was mostly back to feeling like my old self. And I didn't want to quit. I even expanded the taiji portion to include three rounds of the form and one round of the sword form. I didn't quite make all of that; I missed a sword form on a day of long driving. But I have more than 200 continuous days of practice of everything else under my belt, now. And I want that number to keep growing.

There are no words to describe the pain I was in when this blog went silent. But I will try. Imagine that your heart has been raw and bleeding, but feels as if it has scabbed over. Imagine that, for some insane reason, you apply sand paper and remove the scabs, reopening all the old wounds and creating new ones. Imagine that the hurt goes straight to the core. On the outside, there's the deep, almost-black, blood, but through the cracks comes angry red light trying to burst out. The pain dominates everything. Little joys push it back for a moment or two, but then the pain comes crashing down again.

Some of the pain would have faded on its own with time, but I think my daily practice sped up the process. It also let me be aware of the process. The change was gradual. So gradual that I wasn't really aware anything had changed until I sat down one day and realized that I was happy about something. Actually happy. Then, realizing that I was happy made me happier. Now I get an echo of the old pain every so often, but all I have to do is think back to what it was like last year, and I nearly always have to laugh. The echoes are like papercuts compared to a gaping knife wound.

And maybe, just maybe, I've healed enough to start thinking about the world again.