I don't want people to worry too much about me here. As I said to one of our friends lately, I feel like this depression thing has been stalking me for years. I feel like I'm always going to be running away from the depression unless I turn around and actually deal with it. Even though it's tough going, I feel like I'm moving through it instead of sinking into it. I mean, I never really dealt with it after I hit that low point back in New York. It was more like I just got sick of it and started suppressing it, whereupon I became perennially anxious and high-strung instead. And ever since, fear of depression has kept me from dealing with the anxiety or anything else. So it stands to reason that when I managed to calm down my anxiety, here we find depression underneath it.
I've even accepted that maybe I'll have depressed periods throughout my life and it really doesn't have to be the end of the world. I've started referring to depression as something that happens to/for/with me from time to time, instead of just as this Big Scary Thing That Almost Killed Me in 1995. The less I dramatize it, the stronger I feel about working through it. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I hope it's reassuring if anyone was worried about me.
But thank you. For worrying, if you did. I am so lucky to have such friends. The best thing about my life is the people I love who love me too.
Anyway, today two things happened that lightened the gloom a bit.
First, I went to a seminar at the meditation center. I asked about the difference between passivity and acceptance—between "roll with it" and having it roll over you and flatten you.
A couple of people had helpful comments, but what really struck me was one woman who said that after she first "became Buddhist" (I'm not Buddhist, I'll just repeat for the record) she had this same confusion. At one point she was letting her young son hit her and not resisting because she thought that was the "Buddhist thing to do."
Friends pointed out that that was insane. And eventually she could see that it just made her son more anxious, more angry and more aggressive. She realized that the loving thing to do was to observe and accept her son's anger with empathy and compassion, but also not to let him hurt her. Both of them feel better that way. So she encouraged me to look at the outcome and learn from that...
This is kinda what I was trying to get at yesterday, but having the metaphor of a child helps me to visualize how to handle that angry part of my brain. 
I mean, there's no point in getting angry at an angry child—the situation just escalates. Similarly, getting angry at myself for being angry at myself just creates this never-ending spiral of fury. But passively letting that voice berate me just makes things worse too. But if I can relax and just take that step back and just observe it, be kind to it in a firm but gentle way... just as one would (ideally!) do with a difficult child.
Easier said than done, but like I said, that child metaphor helps me connect with some compassion and detachment and empathy. Some space and openness instead of this narrow, dark intensity.
The other good thing that happened today was that I actually did finish the task I promised to do for the Black students' advocacy group, and I presented my work at their meeting (I snuck out of the meditation retreat in the middle of the day to attend part of it). I could see that my work was useful and constructive to the group and people thanked me for it. It contributed to everyone there feeling that the group is making progress, that "we're getting things done." It felt really good to be a part of that.
Tomorrow we're going to Chicago. We were supposed to see Franklin but he seems to have vanished under a mountain of work, or something like that. Maybe it will yet happen..... anyway, we plan to eat a lot (us? eat a lot? I bet you can't imagine!) so it should be fun and I should have something to blog about besides the inside of my head. Yay!
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