Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
New Year’s Fowl
Everyone’s writing about their New Year’s resolutions so I think I should join in. My resolution is to continue what has been a pretty successful two-week effort to control my own moods.
I am a sitting duck for episodes of depression and anxiety, times that I describe as ‘sinking like a stone’ or ‘beating it back with a stick.’ These are usually consequent to nothing, feelings that rise up to choke me while I’m stirring a pot on the stove or wiping the snow from my car. It is a feeling of not having done enough or having done too much, regretting the past or dreading the future. A poisonous little menu, don’t you think?
Sometimes, the moods are dark but fleeting. Sometimes, they move in and stay, fat, sloppy clouds that sit on my lap and drip on my papers for weeks, sometimes months.
I am mindful of the thousands of times I asked my mother, “What’s wrong?” and she replied, “Nothing.” As it turned out, plenty was wrong. She just didn’t have words to put to what she was feeling. Neither do I.
But because of my mother, I try to watch how my face rests in repose. Do I look sad? Worried? Time to raise my eyebrows and look bright and ahead.
Lately, I’ve been trying to be more conscious of mood shifts and rise up to greet them in a more assertive way. I know, for instance, that walking outside for any amount of time, will make me feel more hopeful about the future. It’s a simple thing, taking a walk, but it’s basic feeling well and able. I’ve done three long distance walks (60, 60 and 39 miles) and I think that was the allure. Feeling well and able.
I have also been trying to draw a smaller circle around the things I can control and let the things outside that circle go their own course. This sounds neat and tidy but it’s foreign territory for someone for whom every problem generates a strategic plan and a task list. I tell myself, ‘back away from the white board, put the markers down, this doesn’t concern you.’ Needing to find the logical answer is addictive. And overbearing, I should add. That just occurred to me. It’s overbearing.
So the past two weeks – the Christmas season, a notoriously bad time for me and many of the people I know – I’ve maintained a firewall around my head. The firewall was comprised of equal parts of being with people I can depend on for their good humor, staying modest in my expectations and goals, thinking small and only about the present, and purposely enjoying myself.
I look at this list and I wonder if I could possibly be more mundane. I read like every third meme on Facebook; the only thing missing is a kitten about to be swallowed by a warthog who tells us to ‘look on the bright side and make your enemy your friend.’
Twenty-five years ago I quit a pack a day cigarette habit. Cold turkey. I quit smoking because I had a kid with asthma and there were only so many believable “I have to go the store to get something” escapes to my car to smoke I could pull. I loved smoking. Smoking made me happy, no, smoking made me not nuts or so I thought. But I left smoking. I left my Benson & Hedges by the side of the road and went on to have a decent life without them.
I want to leave depression and anxiety in the same dirty ditch.
I figure I’ve got a two-week run on it. I just have to figure out how to keep it up. There’s nothing that says I have to live out my life as a sitting duck when I could be a swan or an egret or something else a lot more elegant.
So there, that’s my New Year’s resolution. To be an egret.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Reblogged this on Praying for Eyebrowz and commented:
From the brilliant Jan Wilberg.
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Great post I can relate to, especially the part about asking Kim what’s wrong as she says “nothing”. Yup! I remember that with my mom, and now I’m the mom saying “nothing” because you can’t really put it in words some days. I hope 2017 will be the year of the egret!!! 🙂
Oops- typo- not Kim– MOM!
Reblogged this on Red's Wrap and commented:
From a few years ago, my New Year’s resolution “to be an egret.”
I wish you peace, Jan. I know that anxiety that pops up of not having done enough or missing something important. The depression that can follow for me hasn’t happened in a few years. Depression hurts so much and I hope you find your way out. I reblogged a post with a list and the one that caught me and wouldn’t let go was “Smile, you don’t own all the problems of the world.” But what if we are natural born problem solvers who know we can do it better than anyone else? If getting stuck in this problem solving leads us to anxiety and depression there must be a flaw in it, don’t you think?
Maybe we need to develop a schedule to take turns carrying the burden of the world’s problems. But that would take a lot of trust and I’m not sure you can carry my burden adequately all by yourself. 😀
Still learning to stay in my lane. Getting better at it, though.
I love going through your old posts. Some make me want to look away, I’ll admit, but even the raw ones have such heartfelt intent to soothe, I can’t not read them. Especially because someone very dear to me is going through so many of the things you’ve experienced. Your posts give me perspective on what she must be feeling. And I have to ask since you brought it up, are you clinically depressed?
Thanks for asking. It’s a smart thing to do. But no, my moods/depressive episodes don’t reach that level, thankfully.