livingwithablackdog

I sit here in the living room of a place that I moved into a couple of days ago surrounded by half unpacked boxes.  Behind me is the TV … I wanted to watch Bones last night, but do you think I could find the cords for the antenna or power? Nope.  I did find the ordinary drinking glasses that I was determined to unearth the evening before.  Eventually (after Bones was over) I did find the cords … in a shoe box that the removalists conveniently placed on the TV unit (duh! I had just put a stack of papers on top of it).  This is what happens when you are too busy to do all of the packing yourself and get the movers to help with the packing!  I know exactly what is in the boxes I packed … they’re also labeled with more than the room that they were packed in.  I am in the process of washing every bit of linen that I own because everything has been in storage for a couple of months in cardboard boxes and a lot of it has been wrapped around sundry items for padding … it all smells musty.  The clothes from storage will all need ironing before I wear them (although the were bagged in somewhat more smell-proof containment for the most part so don’t all need the wash fest …

It strikes me that life is a bit like this.  It’s all a bit of a journey.  We can mark time for ages and not feel like we’re going anywhere and yet be changing all the time; we can be going backward, or round in circles … or other times our world shifts and we have to figure out what to do with everything that we have and all that we are.  The things that we think are important get re-sorted and stored differently and things find new places.  Some things it is hard to fit.  Other places leave vast holes.  Some things about our new places lack things we really liked about our old worlds, yet there are things that perhaps are vast improvements and what we would wish for might be a mixture of both … but a journey doesn’t allow that.  We must leave one place in order to go to the next and then to keep moving onwards.

This is what the process of living with Depression has been like for me.  When I discovered that this was what was going on in me and that it was not going to resolve itself and just go away my whole world shifted.  Dreams died.  Hopes were broken.  My heart broke.  I needed to learn how to travel a different journey.  It has been a long road, and the path has not followed the course that I thought it would, but I find that perhaps broken hopes heal and perhaps dreams don’t need to die after all.  Perhaps they look a little different to the glorious picture that they once were.  Perhaps they are now more humble.  The journey is not over, it is a life long one … there is always room to grow and that includes the times where health is not great.  My heart has been healing and knows joy.

In the mean time, I unpack my boxes and place my bits and pieces in their new homes for this next leg of the journey.

Now … if only I could find the play doh …

(and the camera)