Sick day and not quite articulate

When I wrote the initial post this week about dealing with the chains on yourself, I was referring to all the hurts and slights and rejections and wrongs we hold onto, whether we did them or someone else did, the things that keep us stuck in the past and in patterns that keep us repeating the same things over and over.  Breaking those chains and allowing ourselves to truly live.  I wasn't necessarily thinking about depression or addiction or self-harming, and if you are dealing with those, seek help, though try to find someone who will really hear you, even if drugs help, you need to be understood as well, to be seen as an actual human being in all the complexity that you are.

Anyway, taking a sick day, fighting off a virus or something.  Started re-reading Thomas Moore's "Dark Nights of the Soul."  I asked for it for my birthday or Christmas some years back after coming out of a particularly rough (though short, only a month) one of my own,  Thought it would be useful, looking for meaning in it all.  If life is a spiritual journey, and a circular one at that, we all spend time circling and passing through hell.  When I was younger, I spent a lot of time there until I realized I could leave (years.)  And I've been back through (when I thought I was done with that), though for shorter durations.  I guess one of the reasons I wanted to read the book is because I couldn't necessarily see it as a clinical condition, I wanted to find a deeper meaning.  My life was a wreck and I didn't know how to begin to fix it...I needed step-by-step instructions of how to get out, someone to hear me, to know me, more than I needed drugs.  Sometimes life just sucks, and it's all coming at you, and it's more than you can handle.

Anyway, I was telling my sister yesterday that if we all have to pass through hell, again and again (makes me think of Persephone), I would like to enjoy my time away rather than dread the thought of going back.  I was also thinking that no one else can fight your inner battles for you, but it's nice to know there are those that have your back, who will support you while you face them.  And while I hate being there, I'll admit, if I allow it to, it changes me, and I learn from it.  It strips you bare and breaks you open.  (Pilgrimage can do this too, because it takes you out of your ordinary life.  And I've done those since, I suppose as a way to go on my own accord as opposed to being surprised.  They weren't a cake walk, but with all the excess of life cleared away to just the basics of food and shelter (by choice), it was simpler to get to the core of things.  Not easy, just direct.)  Oh, and acting.  And clown work.  It's funny, all the internal strife somehow made me more positive, more of an optimist, more willing to search for the good at the core, and I guess it was worth it.

Anyway, if you are passing through, when you pass through, seek support, find a guide (like Dante), get help if you need it.  Let go of the chains you put on yourself, learn from it, and let yourself walk out of the other side.  You don't have to stay there, there is daylight, too.