I hate writing. It brings out an annoying, dark, pessimistic side in me and ruins my day. So I don't do it often. Unless I have a swirling soup of thoughts in my head that are about to boil over. Today I admit the thoughts in my head don't seem as tinged with darkness as they sometimes are, even though they are the same thoughts I've written about before. I've been reflecting about my stay at home life.
Remember when I said I would be perfectly happy staying home and never having to deal with the outside world/society ever again? I still would be, though I'd also like to add "mom" to that. However that department has not changed. But that agitated feeling of guilt, that has made me miserable, that I blamed on the world, has changed. Well, the guilt hasn't actually changed, I just found something else in it.
I'm still angry at the world, but since it's been so long that I've been forced to interact with it on a daily basis it's accurate to say it's on a back burner on a much lower heat. What I've been calling guilt, I've discovered, actually isn't just guilt. Something else got smashed into with it that needed to be separated from it. Pressure. I realized that a lot of what I was calling guilt was pressure. Now that might seem redundant since I've talked about the pressures that society has put on me and people like me that led to the guilt of staying at home, but it's not the same pressure, as I'll explain.
As a person who suffers from anxiety and depression hearing the word "pressure" could send me in a downward spiral of fear till I was as frozen as an ice block. But you and I would both be surprised to know that it didn't happen. It just sat there when I found it, just floating there. It hung there like one of those gems you'd pick up in some video game in order to receive more points. Completely benign, unassuming and- dare I say, kind? At this point it occurred to me that maybe like those gems in those video games that this pressure could be good. But why was it good? What had I'd done to find it? And what would it mean if I picked it up and added it to my sack like in those MPGs? I'd like to say that my answers to these questions were some brilliant insight that I had learned while being at home all these years, but the fact that I'm discovering this as I type would make that a lie. But I have an inkling of where to start to find these answers.
To say that I've changed grossly these passed few years would be an overstatement. I'm still lazy, I still don't have a legit job, I still have depression and anxiety, I still complain, and oh, the obvious, I still can't have kids. If any minute changes have happened of late, it would be the following: I hate the dog and the bird; A bunny died; I painted a painting; sold a few necklaces and paintings; I got a new nephew; and I decided that life does matter.
As one of the most apathetic people on the planet, an astounding political/social statement as "life does matter" seems to be more anti-apathetic and might seem more like it fits in the big changes of my life instead of the small ones. You'd be right, sort of. I say that because it's more like one of those stones that you get and you put it in your rock polisher and it comes out all shiny and smooth and brilliantly colored in pinks and oranges and purples. (I so wish I had one of those growing up.) It's always been there, under some roughness and was never noticed until suddenly I decided to care and polish it up and embolden its surface. If anything, the decision to care should be in the "bigger changes" pile rather than that one statement. Caring does not come naturally to me, I'm apathetic. But caring about some political stance is pretty small scale compared to what I should be caring about like- your family, your spouse, your physical and spiritual well being. So beginning to care about one thing may not be life altering or belong in the "great changes of my life" category, but because I think it's just a tiny piece of a bigger change I felt I should mention it.
Apathy has been my life. I've never really thought about anything. Sure, I did think of things, but I never really thought about things. I was born into a good home with intelligent, supportive parents who taught me things and were members of the church and filled my life with the gospel and with people who were great examples to me. But all of that just blurred together and was in a state of "just there". I was "just there". Coasting through life, some might call it. I called it oblivion.
I was oblivious to everything, kind of like a person might be oblivious to the small amount of red, blue, or yellow pigment color in the white paint on your wall that gave it a name like "frost" or "calcium" or "falling snow". You didn't know that did you? It's just a white wall. That was my life. Up until I started college and slowly, the world I had been blind to had finally started coming into focus. Not just the things that I never knew about as a kid, but things that I had grown up with, that were pounded into my brain since I could walk. I was beginning to see the color pigment on that white wall that I had spent my entire life staring at. Unfortunately though that wall, my wall, was no longer alone. I found another wall behind me and I was beginning to see it's pigment too. I can't say what color or colors the other wall would have been, but it was ugly. That wall was the world, the world I hated because it made me feel guilty, it made me depressed, it made me angry, it made my life hard. That wall blasted me with hatred. All I could do to escape it was to close my eyes and hide from it. It felt safe with my eyes closed. But it was dark, and I was blind once again. The guilt and hatred in me began to fade into the darkness.
Then that guilt came forward again, but without the power of the hatred that had fueled it, it fell apart, revealing the pressure. It was benign and I knew exactly where it came from. It came from God. I know how cheesy that sounds but hear me out. All metaphors and similes aside, I have been trying to know Christ better because my life is going no where, though not from lack of trying. It's been too hard for me due to my physical and mental limitations and Ive exhausted myself enough to finally take that advise that's been drilled into me since birth. I'm leaving it all up to Him.
(Now you're probably wondering why I didn't just lead with that paragraph instead of bringing up metaphors about rocks and wall paint, which might have felt like watching paint dry? The answer: because I need you to understand the pain I'm in. All that probably didn't sound painful to you but when you've become so apathetic, so average, and grey, and helpless, and stuck in the middle and one dimensional, Satan comes calling. And no matter how much you know that's not how life is supposed to be, there's nothing you are able to do about it, as hard as may you try, because you're stuck in a bear trap bleeding out with blood sucking devils slurping up your flesh through a black straw. Painful? yes.)
But saying "leaving it up to God" sounds a lot like "just sitting around and waiting" to me. Which is contradictory to every "primary" answer that Mormons have been taught- read your scriptures, say your prayers, go to church, etc. I do these things (way better than I ever did as a kid). Still stuck. What I've failed to do was something I never understood growing up- getting to know Christ and having a personal relationship with him. I have no idea if it will work, but I hope it will. I know it will be slow, but that pressure I've discovered is what will help. That pressure, that no longer feels like a heavy burden of guilt, is a gift from God. It's what is pushing me to better know Him. And knowing Him better is what will help me heal and change my life.
