For whatever reason, Facebook altering the "mood" of the Feed or just people picking up on the same theme of a few reposted sayings; I've been seeing so much over the last few weeks about thinking/being positive and being happy is a choice. Believe me you, I tried. I tried so hard for so long. It was like mining, every day I would go to work with my pick and with everything I had, go at that dark, stifling underground of resistant rock with my polished, shining pick, flashing brilliantly in the dust filled muted ray of light struggling down, striking in a dazzling tiny shower of sparks, tiny stars lighting the edge of the black hole lurking beside me, that feeling of what could be hidden just below the surface, something amazing just waiting for the proper angle of my next strike...that never comes.
Oh, I get the thin, reedy vein of something momentarily in the right light flashing and promising...it may be a lesser find. It will momentarily fund the repair of my pick or settle me a satisfying dinner that evening, but it's not the Ode To Joy strike I keep hacking away for and dragging myself out of bed for day after day. It never is.
Several years ago, I sat in my psychologists waiting room, reading those little stick people booklets that they literally have for absolutely everything, and this one was on bipolar/depression; downn in a left corner there was a genuinely smiling face with words to the effect that "most (non-mentally ill) people are mostly happy most of the time."
I almost fell on the floor.
I marched into my shrink's office with the page open my finger stabbing at the character, my eyes and mind still disbelieving; COULD THAT BE POSSIBLE?! HOW THE HELL IS THAT POSSIBLE?!
He told me it was accurate.
I felt like I'd walked in on something that wasn't meant for me to see. There was another high school party I wasn't invited to. There was a family reunion I was left out of because they figured I wouldn't come anyway...I just wanted to be invited and feel I was at least momentarily thought of and may even be missed. And sometimes, I do go.
I wander away from my point, though.
I can think positive and *want* to be happy all day long...it isn't happening for me. I have a real, diagnosed, federally recognized and documented ILLNESS that affects, alters and manipulates my mental, physical and emotional self. I take medication, but it is not a cure or a complete fix. It is a "some symptom management" way of living.
I am not entirely in control of my own mind.
I try and think of the majestic, glittering unicorn galloping over the dazzling rainbow...some days...for me, most days, the unicorn must die on the journey.
Understanding why I can't "just think positive" to you is probably as hard as me understanding why you can't understand that I just can't.
So, some of you know I pretend to be a writer. I was a prolific and mildly talented writer in my past. I dreamed novel sized stories, but could never get past the short ones, there were a couple I wrote out to 150 pages with the outline and general story written out, but they died there. It took me years to both realize and then accept, that I was no good at anything but some hybrid of prose and poetry that is heavily non conforming to the accepted rules of writing, grammar and english. My problem is rooted somewhere in one or more of my mental illnesses, I just can't absorb nor comprehend (translate to an understandable example) accepted structure and rules for any type of writing. The words go down on the paper the way they come into my head. They don't want to be amended, they come into my head the way my mind perceives them to be correct and meaningful to what I am trying to express, which in my skewed brain, is the correct form, again, to ME, but maybe not to anyone else....
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