Dear Darby,
If you could read this today, I would have you know ... that I am proud of you for getting out of bed. Each time you get out of bed without having had the deep rest you deserve, you are saying yes to life. Each time you get up after feeling trapped in mental torment while the rest of the world sleeps, you say yes to yourself. Sure, it may have felt like an obligation but you did it voluntarily. As a little girl you had to get up because the curtains were pulled back and the shutters thrown opened brutishly and it was time for get dressed - eat breakfast - go to school.
As a teen sometimes it was because rising became part of maintaining the ruse that you even slept at all. As a young woman - because money needs to be earned and contracts need to be fulfilled. What if it is also because your cells and the sputtering sparks of your dampened spirit know that light, movement, and talking to the other humans will be more than a mere distraction - but rather, a gentle pause from the long, dark, and quivering anxious hours of lying awake and waiting for rest that doesn't arrive? What if these daylight hours are not merely for biding your time, or papering-over the 'real' feelings, but in fact, they are a micro-step to moving forward, one day at a time.
You've learned you don't have to be 'in the mood' for everything - or anything, this is a bitter but potent lesson of depression - that you can do things anyway.
One day, you will see patterns forming - that beyond merely surviving one day after another, this impulse to get up and go anyway becomes a part of 'acting as if ...'. These words and that other phrase, 'fake it till you make it', really take root in this context where action feels nearly impossible - the resistance is so fierce - yet, you do it. For many of us these motivational semantics mean trying on a new attitude for an hour or so to see if the sensation of comfort or confidence lingers like lint clings to the drum in the clothes dryer - we're hoping that it might start to feel less foreign and the sensation might eventually arise with ease.
When persistent suffering is lodged in the soul and seemingly omnipresent, 'faking it' in the short term is like affixing jumper cables to your heart - this is just what we need - another chance at revival. Before you know it, your smile may spontaneously emerge, activating all those little muscles in the face that otherwise, if you had stayed in the cave, would surely have turned to stone.
I will have you know ... that the shadow cast by the bad risings matters; the reluctant steps into daylight after an interminable night matter too. Survival mode will have us have us stew in the wretched hours of a lonely unnamable trepidation - clinging to the resistance of any potential for a brightening of circumstances. Yet it is never the full story. I will have you know because I was there, I was always there. There was light, there was laughter. There were cupcakes and invented songs and poetry recitals and falling asleep in my arms. There was tenderness that, even when you couldn't feel it, I held for you. There was birdsong. There were giggles in the classroom. There was that occasional teacher who looked into your eyes, even when they darkened and darted from place to place, someone who saw multifaceted beauty co-mingled with the pain. While you were feeling unmoored as the innocence you barely got to enjoy was being dismantled - you gave off glimpses of the beauty of a child going through rites of passage of play and distraction and crafting and listening and running and teaching. I saw you too and if I could have been with you I would have anchored you securely in my arms and laid you to rest for as long as it took for your heart to heal.
Instead, I collected the pieces, I saved them for you, for us, for one day when I could help you put the child's story back together. The beauty of these pieces is that they can be recomposed and designed in endless kaleidoscopic patterns. If you can hear me, know I am here.
I didn't see your messages late last night, yet another sleepless night for you. A doom vibrated around my heart muscles when I woke and saw the opportunity I missed. Yet, you reached out and that is a very good thing. What's more, you got up today and got yourself to work - anyway. This is what we cycle-breakers do - we insist on participating in life even when it hurts. The distress of faking it is punctuated by unexpected delicious laughter and soulful human connection. These are the rewards of not staying in the cave. When we make sure we are not alone, disillusionment gives way to a visceral desire to belong to the world - anyway. This is hope. This is the longing that contains within it the seed of Love, your perennial gift to our world.
Love, Mama
12th November 2024