When you live with depression and anxiety the answers are blowing in the wind.
It’s been a very interesting week in the diary. Full of ups and downs, twists and turns, and a few king hits thrown in to drop me back to floor. Frankly, the floor and I have become far too familiar in the past few weeks. Me buckled, and the floor… well it’s a floor. What does it have to do but keep me separated from the dirt below it.
When you live with depression and anxiety, the world doesn’t have a floor to protect us from the dirt. Metaphorically speaking, when we receive a punch from the world’s ongoing posturing for control, our illness drops us directly into it.
It became abundantly clear to me this week that regardless of how much we resist change, the world continuously presses in on us, reshaping and altering us in ways over which we have no control. And it’s not just the physical realities of knowledge and ageing that are pressured into adaptation, but the more subtle elements about who we are and what’s our purpose.
I confess that the woman I was at 20 was not the same woman at 30 who was not the same woman at 40 (and so on…!). Apart from the fact that my body, like all others, is subject to entropy, decay and eventual death (not to mention gravity!!) it is the more indefinable qualities in my life that have altered simply due to the ‘winds of change’.
Apparently, it’s a generally known fact that high-rise buildings are built to flex in the wind because if they don’t, that same wind will blow them over. This seems a great example of how, when we tie ourselves to particular self-perceptions, we can position ourselves to stand unmoving against the wind. Our expectation being that the wind will alter it’s course to suit our position.
You see, I think there are two types of people in the world. People who embrace change and undertake a life of self-discovery and growth, whilst others prefer the consistency of sameness. Neither is a better or worse position than the other, they are simply different. However, whether we choose change or not, our lives will always move in the direction of the wind.
There’s no doubt that as we deal with our relationship to the world around us we will be drawn more heavily into the rips and eddies that catch us unaware. Events that generate loss, fear, anger, happiness, jealousy, excitement and joy (just to name a few) are the unknowns in how we as a person will develop our opinions, our decisions and our actions. However, before any development can take place we have to reconcile the fact that life cannot be the same as it was. It must flex or be destroyed.
I’m no expert in how to change gracefully. In fact, whilst my personality displays itself as loud and spirited, at the heart of it is a small girl who sits, waiting to be loved for who she is.
In the words of Bob Seger:
And I remember what he said to me
How he swore that it never would end
I remember how he held me oh so tight
Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then
Against the wind
We were runnin’ against the wind
We were young and strong, we were runnin’
Against the wind
To listen to Bob Seger’s Against the Wind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiviKbxP9xM
If you need to talk to someone NOW call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Deb Shugg is an awarded businesswoman, wife & mother, author and a sufferer of depression and anxiety.
If you need help to deal with your symptoms see your doctor.
(Abuse of another person is NEVER okay. If you are being abused or, if you are an abuser please seek help.)
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