deep as a puddle? not i, madam...

i have been told that i think too much (or too hard, or too deeply, or too fill-in-your-favourite-word-of-excess-here). though i personally would prefer to err on the side of being thoughtful, people often make this comment to me with a tone approximating disdain, accompanied by much sighing and eye-rolling. well, put your exasperation aside, folks, cuz i just can't help it. as much as i like quacking to my favourite songs, i am not much like a duck at all (this being a reference to the whole water-rolling-off-my-back thing).

lately, i have been plagued by a sense of loss. there have been tangible losses, such as the loss of my beloved nephew-dog, and there are a couple of others that i don't even know how to write about yet. but there have been other, more illusive losses that unfurl themselves in my stomach, with slow but sharp tendrils prickling behind my eyelids and making my heart ache. these are the ones that are the most unsettling. these are the losses that have caught me unawares.

it sounds kind of dramatic, but my sense of being in the world has shifted. i have come to some very uncomfortable, painful conclusions about myself and my interactions with others, and they are not things i can control, or change...or forget about. these conclusions are like the hushed, reverent voices of a hundred little lamas in my ears, and they have been whispering 24/7 over the past three weeks.

i can assure you i am not cracking up...i've already been there, done that, and trust me, this isn't what it looks like - for me, anyway. after 13 years of battling, denying, and finally accepting my life with a diagnosis of major depression, i am quite familiar with the 'landscape of my madness.' but this...this constant feeling of emotional indigestion is almost more painful, both because i am facing a difficult truth, and then because it is one that people have pointed out to me all my life (which, in kd-land, means that i have been compelled to resist it!!). damn, i hate when people know me better than i know myself.

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however: something wonderful has happened as a result, and i'm pretttttty sure you're going to think i'm really off my rocker when i tell you what it is. i can't describe it how it feels, other than it's like a dam has been broken somewhere inside of me...and i now have this new superpower (it truly feels that way!) that enables me to cry like a normal person. that is to say, i can cry more openly, and most exciting - i can cry when i feel like crying. it's crazy. these days, when i feel sad, or happy, or when something has touched me, i can tear up with the best of them. i'm on the top of the world, i tell you.

don't get me wrong, i'm a gal that does my fair share of boo-hooing, but my crying has always been hush-hush, a covert activity that i undertake privately and usually alone. somewhere along the line, i perfected the art of deferring crying from when i felt like it, to a time when i was hidden away from everyone else. it became an almost academic undertaking, whereby i replaced feeling with thinking - mostly thoughts about how i absolutely couldn't and shouldn't cry. (note: here again, hypocrisy abounds. i have none of the judgmental and punitive feelings about other people crying. just myself.) indeed, i have yearned for years to cry when i felt like crying - years, i tell you!! - and i have saluted, envied, and prayed for all you normal people to write cognitive-behavioural books so i could try training myself to cry or something...but alas, somehow i have figured it out, when i least expected it. and it is divine.

so, yeah. i know i am on the upswing. sometimes it just has to be bad awhile for it to get good, right?